


Chiaroscuro

by formergirlwonder (orphan_account)



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: "Literally Filmed In Black And White", Archie is the sexy dumb sidekick that all detectives need, Betty hires him to find her sister, F/F, F/M, Feel that slow burn, Film Noir, I repeat--Film Noir, Implied Cheronica, Jughead is a hard-boiled detective, No really it's glacial, Oh and the Blossoms are Riverdale's mafia, Seriously how has nobody done this yet?, Strangers to Friends to Kissing to "Business Partners" (wink wink), by the way, so basically a better-looking version of Hastings and/or Watson
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-17
Updated: 2017-06-17
Packaged: 2018-10-06 15:16:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 68,339
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10337472
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/formergirlwonder
Summary: Our story is about a city, and the people who live in that city. It's about the dark corners, the hiding places nobody knows where the hand of the law doesn't quite reach. It's about broken-down old buildings, about concealed switchblades. It's about what is commonly known aschiaroscuro: the intense, blinding contrast between light and dark. In this city, though, there's a little moreoscurothan there ischiaro.The name of our city is Riverdale.Film Noir AU where Betty hires Jughead to find Polly. Featuring snarky narrator Jughead, both Dark and Light Betty, and more.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Well, I'm trying my hand at a multi-chapter now!!! Let me know what you think!
> 
> In terms of style, I tried to go a little more Raymond Chandler than Dashiel Hammett, with a little bit of Rex Stout. I hate first person narration, but it's a hallmark of the genre, so I took a stab at it. Hope you guys like it!

Our story is about a city, and the people who live in that city. It's about the dark corners, the hiding places nobody knows where the hand of the law doesn't quite reach. It's about broken-down old buildings, about concealed switchblades. It's about what is commonly known as _chiaroscuro_ : the intense, blinding contrast between light and dark. In this city, though, there's a little more _oscuro_ than there is _chiaro_.  
  
The name of our city is Riverdale.  
  
I've lived in Riverdale long enough to know that nobody knows half of a percentage of what there is to know about it. So when I heard the purr of an engine by the sidewalk outside my office and went to take a look out the front window, I was hardly surprised that I didn't recognize the car, or the redhead behind the wheel, or the blonde getting out of the passenger side. Riverdale's a small city living in the remains of a bigger one, but we're not small enough yet to turn into one of those towns where everyone knows everyone and everyone's business to boot. The day that happens, I'll be out of a job, because if you want to know something in one of _those_ towns, you're best off asking a little old lady.  
  
The redhead parked and kept on loitering. He seemed like one of those pointless sorts of people that either goes nowhere at ninety miles an hour or goes somewhere at five. The blonde shut the passenger side door and started marching up the sidewalk.  
  
That was unusual. Usually, when I get a client, they march three steps, stop, look back, walk down the street, walk back, twist their fingers in their handbag if they're a lady and stuff their hands in their pockets if they're not, draw themselves up stiffly, mutter to themselves something along the lines of " _I've got to do it!_ ", march two more steps like they're being chased by the devil, sink back and stare at the " **Twilight Investigations** " sign, then either resolutely stride up to ring the doorbell, or turn tail and flee for the car.  
  
I let her out of the waiting room, which was more of a closet anyway, and sat down at my desk, watching her. "Good morning," I said.  
  
She looked up from the ground, which had been interesting her immensely. "Oh! Good morning, Mr.--Jones," she greeted, her eyes flicking to the nameplate on my desk. "I don't have an appointment, but the office seemed empty, and I only have an hour before I have to go back, so I thought I'd try."  
  
"Okay," I said, more interested in my visitor than her schedule. As I'd noticed from outside, she was blonde--not dirty blonde or platinum blonde or honey blonde, but the real deal. Up close, she had two blue-green eyes a fraction short of over-large (currently turned appealingly towards me), a mouth painted over in tulip pink, a nose of the customary sort, and skin of the variety that more romantically minded people might term "Dresden-china". She was wearing some sort of wool jacket-and-skirt set in a rather unassuming shade of tan over a pastel pink blouse, with stockings and flats. Her handbag was of the "sensible" family, but she carried it as if it was a glamorous accessory. She wasn't any older than me, which is to say that if she knew what was good for her, she should have been at some sort of boarding school instead of messing around on the seamy side of town. All in all, she couldn't have been more guileless-looking if she had worn her hair in two plaits with blue ribbon bows at the end and carried a sign that read " _Ingenue_."  
  
Clients don't come into a PI office looking that naïve unless they have a definite reason.  
  
She was still standing at the far end of the office, eyeing the scattered chairs like she intended to defend herself fiercely when they inevitably rose up to attack her. "Sit," I suggested. "You want advice?"  
  
The best judge of a client's character is the way they sit down. Any PI worth his salt puts a variety of chairs out there, none of them so close to the desk as to be considered a shoo-in. She took a good, long look at the assemblage, which today consisted (in order of closeness to the desk) of a yellow horsehair armchair with a high back, a wooden stool upholstered in blue, a tall wicker something-or-other, and a red monstrosity that was somewhere south of a couch and somewhere north of a loveseat.  
  
The clients who know what they're about head for the first available seat that puts their eyes somewhere near mine in level. If they're trying to trick me, that goes double. She took a long hard look at the wicker, dismissed it, and glided over to the monstrosity, on which she sat with her ankles crossed and her back straight. The effect was something out of an advertisement for a finishing school. Her eyes ended up a few inches below mine, though. "Yes," she said, getting herself settled. "I do want advice--sort of."  
  
I took a perfunctory glance at her ring finger: empty, which wasn't surprising at her age. "Before we start, I don't follow cheating boy-friends. Or recover incriminating photographs."  
  
She flushed a definite red, half-smiled, then bit her bottom lip. The smile beat a hasty retreat. "You mean Archie, right? No, he hasn't got anything to do with why I'm here. He just drove me so my mother wouldn't know."  
  
"Archie is the redhead outside?"  
  
A quick nod.  
  
"And you are?" I prompted.  
  
"Betty. Betty Cooper."  
  
The name rang a very faint bell, but it wasn't an alarm sort of bell, so I pressed on. "Nice to meet you, Miss Cooper. What do you need advice about?"  
  
She took a deep, shuddering breath, fixing her eyes on the ground. When she looked up, her eyes were dead serious. "I need you to find my sister."  
  
"Did your mom cheat on your dad, or vice versa? You can pay me to hunt up the lovechild's address, but Town Hall might be an easier bet." She was obviously going through rough times, and maybe I should have been nicer, but anyone who knows me knows that sardonic humor is just my way of relating to the world.  
  
The red flush made an encore appearance. "She's my full sister, Mr. Jones. I don't think you get what I'm saying. She's gone missing."  
  
Silently, I pulled a pad of paper towards myself and prepared to take notes. She noticed it in the corner of her eye, paused for a millisecond, then continued in a clear voice as if determined to take the plunge and be done with it. "I've been at college up until recently. Out-of-state in a journalism program. Then I did a program of study abroad in Paris with some friends. I wasn't in in touch with my family at all, really. When I got back home--that was a few weeks ago--my sister wasn't there."  
  
I jotted down the salient points and looked up. "Your sister's name is--?"  
  
"Polly," she answered.  
  
"And she looks like you? Any differences I should know about in terms of describing her?"  
  
"People mistake us for twins."  
  
"When she disappeared, did the police investigate?"  
  
She shook her head slightly. "That's the thing. It was all completely legal. My sister _supposedly_ had a nervous breakdown and tried to kill herself. My parents committed her to an asylum." She leaned forward pleadingly. "But I know Polly's not insane. You have to understand, Mr. Jones, I've known Polly my entire life--I know her better than anyone I've ever met. If there was something, anything like that, I would have known." Her eyes locked on mine with a burning intensity. " _Polly's not insane_ ," she repeated.  
  
"So you want me to find her?" I asked in a businesslike manner.  
  
"I'm not done yet. I'm a journalism student; I can follow a paper trail as well as anyone else can. I found my mother's financial records and tracked Polly down two days ago." That was impressive, I had to admit. I asked for the name of the asylum, and she gave it.  
  
"And then--?" I prompted delicately.  
  
"And by the time I got there, Polly had run away. She broke her window minutes before I arrived and jumped out. I want you to find her before the police do," she insisted. She gave me a sidelong glance as I opened my mouth to protest. "My parents _can't_ have her. The place where they were keeping her was awful! I saw it myself, I took pictures--"  
  
"You're asking me to break the law," I pointed out. The naïve schoolgirl act was beginning to seem less incongruous. Only the really scary ones tried to act innocent.  
  
"No, I'm not," she insisted hotly. Then she calmed herself down. "I'm not asking you to withhold information from the police, or to stop my parents from getting Polly. I've got that part of things covered. If somebody asks you flat out what you're doing or what you know, go ahead and tell them." She gave a little shrug, probably to illustrate her indifference.  
  
"And you can pay? On your own?"  
  
Her eyes rolled faintly towards the ceiling. "Yes, I can pay. I have savings from some columns I did on the side."  
  
"I'll take your word for it," I decided. It wasn't like business was exactly booming at the moment.  
  
"Alright. I feel so relieved, you have no idea. What do you need me to do?" she asked.  
  
"Nothing?" I suggested. "That's kind of the point of hiring a private eye."  
  
"Let me know if there's any more information I can get you," she said, standing up fluidly.  
  
"You really want to get involved, huh?" I observed.  
  
"I'd do it all myself if I had the faintest idea how to start," she confirmed resolutely. That was something I could well believe, from what I'd learned of her. There were gaps, but I had a fairly well-formed picture of Betty Cooper's life. It was an ability I prided myself on: taking bits and pieces of fact and weaving it into conjecture, like an author establishing a backstory.  
  
"I'm sure you would, Miss Cooper." I went to open the door for her, standing to the side to leave room for her to pass. She retrieved her handbag from the floor and stood a moment longer.  
  
"You're sure there's nothing I can do?" she asked again.  
  
I shook my head. She deflated a little in disappointment, but after a moment, she perked herself up and headed for the door.  
  
When she was about a foot away, I reached out and snagged the sleeve of her top between two fingers. She turned, outraged, raising a hand to slap me. Then her eyes darted down, as she took in what I was looking at. "That's nothing," she mumbled hastily. We remained there for a moment in tableau.  
  
"Why don't you come back inside, Miss Cooper?" I suggested.  
  
She shook her head. "I really must be going."  
  
"You said you had an hour."  
  
Her eyes widened. "No, I had an hour inclusive, which comes to twenty minutes if you count driving time. Mr. Jones, the marks on my hand are--"  
  
"Several layers of self-inflicted scars caused by digging your nails into your skin. You want to tell me what that's got to do with things? Did Polly teach you that?" If Polly had self-harmed, then maybe a suicide attempt wasn't too far out of the question--  
  
Her eyes darted to the door. "I don't see how that's your business--"  
  
"Did Polly do that?" I pressed again.  
  
"What? No, you have to believe me, Polly's not insane!" Her hands twitched upwards as if she wanted to cover her ears.  
  
"Nobody's saying she is. Listen, if you have to go, you have to go. But I'll tell you what. Can you get away tonight?"  
  
She seemed much more at ease now that I'd dropped the other line of questioning. "Yes. Yes, I can."  
  
"Alright. Bring any hard evidence you have, and meet me at the Blue and Gold. You old enough to drink?" I asked, giving her a hard look. She didn't look it, but neither did I.  
  
"Yes, I am. Can I have the address?"  
  
I told it to her, and she gave me a card with her number and address in case I needed to get a hold of her, along with detailed instructions for lies to tell her mother when I did call. She asked if I had better ideas for mother-evasion tactics, seeing as I was the professional, but I demurred, since having no mother to speak of doesn't exactly lend itself to the practice of mother-dodging. Then I changed the topic, since she looked to be in danger of pitying me. "The Blue and Gold's where I always start when I want to know something. Get there whenever you can make it. I'll shoot to get there around nine. Go to the bar and ask for Ronnie; tell her you're a friend of mine and she'll keep an eye on you. I have some people I can talk to there, and if you keep fairly quiet, you can listen in." It might be useful to have her there anyway. I don't know half the names I ought to in this business, and so she'd be able to give me a sense of which leads seemed relevant. Besides I figured that keeping her occupied might keep her nails out of her palms for a bit. Sue me for soft-heartedness.  
  
"I really have to go now," she insisted.  
  
"Nobody's stopping you," I observed.  
  
"Yes. Alright, then. Tonight, at nine. Goodbye, Mr. Jones." She shook my hand and was gone. I watched through the windows as she loaded herself into the car, startling the redhead from a reverie that apparently involved fingering guitar chords in the air. He woke up quick, though, and hit the gas the instant she hit the seat leather. They tore off faster than any non-suicidal beings ought to, and were gone before I had time to blink.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jughead talks to several informants, and inadvertently hears Betty in a heated conversation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yay! I'm back! Thanks so much for all the love on my last chapter, guys! You're the best!

I made it to the Blue and Gold at quarter till nine. The car from that morning was already parked outside, so I wouldn't have to wait long for my client. I shut the door of my car and pulled my coat tighter around me as I hopped out.  
  
"Looking for someone?" said a voice from behind me.  
  
"Hey, Ethel," I greeted, turning lazily around. "You got any tips for me to check out?"  
  
Ethel plopped down on the hood of my car, twirling a strand of red hair between her fingers. "Nothing so far. Clayton got Ginger last night, though. I told her she ought to be careful, but nothing doing. You sure there isn't something you can try?"  
  
"Nothing short of beating him up, and that didn't work last time," I admitted candidly, pulling two cigarettes out of my case and offering one to her. She refused it, so I stuffed it back in my pocket and lit up my own. "What'd Ginger do?"  
  
"Tried the police, but it's not like they'd listen to her. They never listen to streetwalkers."  
  
I shifted uncomfortably. Riverdale's police department had a fairly strict "look-the-other-way" policy when it came to crimes perpetrated against the less-than-virtuous. "Sucks. Hey, speaking of listening, I've got a new case, so I'm gonna head inside. In the meantime, can you get the word out that I'm looking for the lowdown on someone named Polly Cooper?"  
  
Ethel's brows contracted. "What sort of lowdown do you want?"  
  
"Anything you've got."  
  
She leaned forward, pitching her voice lower. "The girl's blonde, right? Thin, blonde, kind of wispy-looking?"  
  
"Haven't met her. My client's the sister, but if family resemblance goes, you've probably hit it. Did you see her?" I asked.  
  
"End of May or thereabouts. Only told me that her name was Polly and that she'd run away from home. I tried to help her out, but she got spooked when she figured out what I did for a living--you know the type. Turned tail and ran like there were dogs after her. I haven't seen her since," Ethel finished. "Did she turn up dead, then?" she added a moment later, with some concern.  
  
I shook my head. "Ran away from an asylum. The sister wants me to turn her up before the cops do. Where was she when you talked?" Polly wouldn't go to the same place, probably, but it might be a good look into her mindset.  
  
Ethel scrunched up her face. "Sleeping under a bench at the old park. I don't care if it was summer, nobody should sleep out alone, especially wearing a flimsy little nightdress like she was. If she's still alive right now, she must have learned some sort of street smarts, because when I saw her, I'd have given her a month at the outside."  
  
"Thanks, Ethel," I said, slipping her a bill. "I'll let you get to work. Do you mind if I tell the sister what you told me?"  
  
She shrugged and passed the bill back. "Go ahead and tell her. Especially if you don't make me take your money." I snorted and tried to pass it to her again, but she slapped my hand. "Jug, you're getting thinner by the day. I'm going to be fine without this. You keep it and get yourself some food."  
  
"You gave me information, I'm paying you for it. 'S only fair." I protested. "I'll get paid come the end of this."  
  
"We don't do business like that, Jug, and you know it." Ethel insisted. "When have I ever taken your money for anything? You don't pay your friends for giving you gossip. You look out for me, I look out for you, and it all evens out in the end. I'm not gonna take your money. I gave you gossip, so you can pay me back with your own. How's Jelly?"  
  
"I don't know," I admitted. "Mom came for her over the summer, just after I finished that last case. Said even if we didn't like Dad, she shouldn't be on the streets." I kicked at a piece of plastic on the ground moodily, trying not to think about Jelly in too much detail.  
  
Beside me, Ethel took a deep, outraged breath. "You know I'd never let anything happen to Jelly when I'm sitting for her!" she protested angrily. "Did you tell your mom she was safer on the streets than anywhere else?"  
  
"Yeah. Didn't work, 'specially when Jelly mentioned that you were her best friend, and that you, I quote here, ' _dress up in pretty clothes at night, like a princess_!'"  
  
Ethel threw back her head and laughed loudly. "Jelly's something, alright. Hope she's alright. Let me know when you hear from her," she requested, patting me on the back.  
  
"I will. Bye, Ethel."  
  
"Bye, Jug!" Ethel said enthusiastically, hopping off the car and vanishing into the night. I waited a few minutes to make sure she was okay before I headed inside.  
  
The music at the Blue and Gold wasn't bad, which was about thirty percent of why I liked it. Perhaps ten percent of why I liked it was that the drinks were strong, and a good fifteen percent was that Ronnie, who worked the bar most nights, could be trusted with just about anything. Another five percent was the fact that the dancing took place off to the side a bit, where it couldn't bother anyone. As for the other forty, well, nobody kept much of a handle on their tongue there, so it wasn't too hard to get a tip.  
  
I headed over to the bar and flagged Ronnie down. "Hey, Ron. I'm meeting someone tonight, she's blonde--"  
  
"She's already here," Ronnie interrupted in a business-like manner. "But, you're out of luck, if you've got hopes--"  
  
"I don't have hopes--" I protested.  
  
"Because she's here with a boy," she finished, reaching up to straighten her pearl necklace. (I'd never been able to figure out whether the pearls were real. If they were fake, they were a good fake.) "And he's scrumptious-looking, I mean, _totally_ swoon-worthy, so if you're making a move--"  
  
"I'm not making a move." Ronnie could be trusted with anything, but she tended to get carried away in certain areas. "She's a client, Ronnie."  
  
"Fine, then. Be that way," Ronnie said, rolling her eyes mock-exasperatedly as she pulled out some bottles and started messing around with their contents. "I assume you want the normal, right? Cause I forgot to ask, and now I've started on it, and I can't imagine managing to persuade anyone _else_ to drink the sort of hideous concoctions you like, and--"  
  
"Normal sounds good." Ronnie finished up on the tumbler and slid it across to me. I took a sip and sighed. "Thanks a bunch, Ronnie. Where's she now?"  
  
Ronnie jerked her head towards the back. "She got me to set them up in a meeting room, actually. If you kick Carrot-top out, send him my way, okay?"  
  
"Will do," I agreed, laying out money on the bar. "By the way, Ron, can you keep an ear out for any mentions of someone named Polly Cooper? She'd be blonde, fairly thin--"  
  
"--just like your client here," Ronnie finished. "Alright, I'll let you know."  
  
"I'm looking for anyone who's seen her since May," I clarified.  
  
"Aye-aye sir," Veronica mocked. "No, seriously, I'll be sure and do that. Anything happens, I'll let you know, and I won't even tell Kev first."  
  
"How is Kev?"  
  
"Good," Veronica purred. "He's trying to get in the army again, him and a friend named Joaquin. Don't know if his application'll get accepted, but he's keeping me updated as best he can. Now, I have to get back to work," she declared suddenly, slapping her hands on the bar for emphasis. "Take your drink, go meet your client, send me the hunk of ginger, and try not to get in a barfight, or I'll have to kick you out."  
  
I saluted her with the glass and stood up from the bar, maneuvering my way leisurely through the crowd.  
  
I was going to have to see if Betty could find out exactly when her sister was committed, to see how it matched up with Ethel's information. Either Polly had been committed, escaped, then been recommitted, or Polly had run away separately and been committed at a later date. What I needed to do was to establish a timeline for Polly's movements prior to the asylum--if she found someone willing to help her, chances were she'd go back to them.  
  
The door to Meeting Room 3 loomed up suddenly in front of me. I lowered a hand to the doorknob, then pressed my ear to the door to make sure I wasn't interrupting something.  
  
I was interrupting, but not in that sort of way. "Betty, you're not listening to me!" a man's voice insisted. "This isn't safe or healthy. I mean, what happens if your parents are right? At the end of the day, this is about what's best for Polly--"  
  
" _Polly isn't insane,_ Archie," Betty's voice hissed lowly. "I swear to God, how many more times do I have to say that? Stop white-knighting me. Stop right now. I asked you to drive me here, not to lecture me about this. I am going to find Polly, and I will do _whatever_ it takes."  
  
Archie's voice rose up higher. "Betty, you're not yourself. Give this a rest--"  
  
"What do you mean, I'm not _myself_?"  
  
"It's a figure of speech! I just meant--I mean, I had a gig last week and you didn't even show--"  
  
"That wasn't _about_ this, Archie! Listen, Mr. Jones is going to be here any minute, so can you go wait?"  
  
"Betty, I'm just trying to help. You go home, I'll talk to him. Okay? Let me help you."  
  
Betty gave a bitter-sounding laugh. "Help me how? By telling my mom? Archie, you only care about helping me when your girlfriend dumps you, okay, so go moon after Valerie. I don't honestly care. I am _doing_ this, and I am doing it _myself_ , and you can't--"  
  
"I am going to _stop_ you if you keep on doing this!" Archie's voice yelped in the most whiny threatening tone I had ever heard.  
  
"Archie, why?"  
  
"Because you are too _good_ to get involved in this sort of thing! You need to keep yourself safe, Betty, not go around talking to these sorts of people--"  
  
"She was nice, okay!"  
  
"That woman outside was a prostitute!"  
  
Well, I'd have to ask Ethel about how that meeting had gone. That would probably end up being very entertaining.  
  
"Who had information that could help with a story I'm running!"  
  
Yep, I was definitely going to have questions for Ethel.  
  
"Betty, I am driving you home right now. Call the detective tomorrow and tell him you've changed your mind. Then I'll go with you to tell the police, and they'll find Polly and bring her home. I'm sorry about what happened to her, but you need to let her g--"  
  
"Archie, I'll find my own way home if you won't drive me. I'm staying. Polly needs me--"  
  
"Fine. Go ahead and do that," Archie snapped crisply.  
  
"Archie, are you going to tell my--"  
  
"No, I won't. Not yet, at any rate. Try not to get yourself killed, and I won't have to." I sidestepped neatly out of range of the door before he flung it open. All I got of him was the vague impression of red hair and a dour expression before he stalked out of the hallway, headed for the bar.  
  
Ronnie would have a nice night, even if nobody else did.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me know what you think! (And I think Dark Betty will be coming up, if not next chapter, then the chapter after, so be sure to stick around!!)


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jughead and Betty bond over evidence; a photo connects Polly's disappearance to the Jason Blossom case.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm back! No Dark Betty this time, because that's the way this chapter shook out, but plenty of Bughead to make up for it. Enjoy!

I gave Betty a few minutes to clean herself up before I knocked on the door, mostly so she didn't know I heard her talking with Archie. So at nine sharp, I rapped on the door a bit, and she came over to let me in.  
  
I stood in the doorway for a moment, becoming suddenly conscious of several things about Betty. For one, she was very good at hiding it when she was upset. If I hadn't heard the fight, I'd never have guessed from looking at her--except for point number two, which was that her hands were still a little red, the sort of red that comes from being scrunched up into fists for an extended period of time without actually hitting anything. (It was a sort of red I was fairly familiar with.) Luckily, though, they weren't bloody, which was a good thing in my book. Item number three, which was more of a dull tingling in the back of my subconscious, was that she cleaned up rather nicely. She was wearing a pale grey dress made out of some sort of vaguely shimmery-looking fabric that Ethel, Jellybean, or even Ronnie would have given me hell for not being able to name. Whatever it was, though, it looked good on Betty.  
  
Even more deeply in my subconscious, I noted that I'd somehow put myself on a first-name basis with her, and I wasn't even sure she _knew_ my first name yet.  
  
"Hi, Mr. Jones," she said, standing rather self-consciously by the door. Then, in a moment that must have been born out of sheer impulsivity, her eyes darted to my head. "Were you attacked on the way here? What happened to your hat?"  
  
I wear a fedora with a slashed brim; it's a deliberate choice. "My hat's fine, actually. I like it this way."  
  
Betty took a moment to comprehend the fact that I would willingly wear what most would describe charitably as a ‘monstrosity.’ "Oh, I didn't mean to offend you! I am so sorry about that." She turned and led the way into the room. "I brought everything I could find, though that isn't much."  
  
She had it all laid out on a table, too--a pile of snapshots, a few official-looking documents, a handful of typed pages, and a sheaf of handwritten letters. I laid my coat on the back of a chair and sat on the table, with my boots on the seat of the chair. Betty raised an eyebrow in my direction, but seemed to decide not to mention it, probably because I got defensive about my hat. "I talked to some people, had them get the word out, and I think I found someone who saw your sister last May."  
  
Betty had taken a seat at the table, too, and she was listening to me while drumming the fingers of one hand on the table and twirling her ponytail with the other. Her forehead was crinkling up as I spoke like the wrapper on a candy bar.  
  
"Last May? Polly didn't get committed until the beginning of July. Are you sure?" she asked.  
  
"Ethel's never steered me wrong before. Listen, though," I offered, "it can still make sense. Look at it this way. Ethel says she met Polly sleeping under a bench at the park, somewhere around the end of May. Polly apparently told Ethel that she ran away from home. Say your parents found Polly, and brought her home. She might have then tried to run away again, and been committed. Now, if she's disappeared from the asylum, then she might run--"  
  
She made the connection. "--to anyone she was in contact with earlier. Got it. Here's what I have. Exhibit A: pictures of Polly." She slid the snapshots across the table to me. "So you can show them to people to make sure you're both talking about the same person." I picked the first snap up off the table and examined it with interest. Polly definitely looked a lot like Betty, I noted. She was wearing a white sundress, sitting on a black metal bench amidst a careful assortment of potted plants. In her hand she held a rose, and she smiled up at the photographer with the careful, practiced, slightly hesitant smile one gives to a stranger. Her eyes, however, were slightly dreamy and not-quite-all-there, vaguely gazing somewhere off to the left of the frame.  
  
"That's the outtake," Betty explained. "My parents have another one that's more flattering, but the studio sent us prints of this first by mistake, and my parents forgot to throw them out."  
  
"How recent is this?" I asked, turning it over to see if there was a date on the back.  
  
Betty pursed up her lips in consideration. "We did studio portraits so I'd have a headshot for summer job applications…I'd say it's about a year and a half old. Possibly just a bit older. The next one's more recent, but it's not professional, and I wasn't sure what would be better."  
  
The next one was Betty and Polly wearing matching dresses in front of a car, with a boy who I assumed was Archie in between them. All three were smiling hugely, and the boy's arm was draped around Polly's waist. I turned it over to find a pencil notation in neat cursive, which read: "PB and J (ha!), Spring vacation."  
  
"J?" I said.  
  
"Jason. Polly stepped out with him for a while, but his parents don't get along with ours. He spent some time farming in Canada, and then he came back over the summer. Actually, he drowned rather recently in a boating accident--"  
  
"Wait," I interrupted, still trying to catch up, "Jason is Jason _Blossom_?"  
  
"Yeah," she said, as if that particular piece of information was fairly self-evident. "Why? Does it matter?"  
  
Well, yeah, of course it mattered. Bodies don't just vanish, I wanted to explain, and Jason's hadn't been found, even though it had been months--  
  
"Hold on a second," I said, squinting to try and clear my head. "What day was Polly committed? Exactly?"  
  
Betty rummaged among the official-looking documents. "July 4th, at eight-forty two AM…" She trailed off, looking up at me with a horrified expression. "You don't think it's related, do you?"  
  
I felt my mouth set grimly. "Look, Miss Cooper. I can tell you what you want to hear--"  
  
"I don't want that," Betty insisted, jutting her chin out stubbornly.  
  
"If you'd have let me finish, I would have said that you don't strike me as the sort of person who wants that sort of thing. You clearly don't need to be coddled," I pointed out. "So, yes, this could be related. Or it could not be. Now, if it is related, and the police find out," I warned, "I can't promise that this will stay silent. There's only so much the police will accept in the way of investigator-client privilege these days."  
  
"That's fine," Betty agreed hollowly. "Just do your best." I took a good long look at her then. She had slumped down in her chair just a fraction and her eyes were trained resolutely on the baseboards at the opposite end of the room, and I had a nagging feeling that something wasn't right, that this was not how she should be.  
  
"Are you alright?" I asked.  
  
She shook herself a bit, offering me a wan smile. "I'm fine. I'm just worried for my sister."  
  
"Polly's lucky to have you on her side," I said by way of reassurance.  
  
Betty's teeth began to make inroads on her lower lip. "If I had been at home, I could have helped her, and none of this would have happened."  
  
"Maybe," I agreed nonchalantly. She lifted her face and stared at me, her eyes trembling ever-so-slightly with tears.  
  
"You're not going to argue and say it's not my fault?" she asked sarcastically.  
  
"I already said I wouldn't coddle you," I reminded her. "Maybe if you had been at home, this wouldn't have happened. Maybe it would have. But now it's happened, and all you can do is find answers."  
  
The word seemed to snap her out of her funk quickly. "Answers. Right," she said, drawing herself up and blinking briskly. "Well, here's what I've found. Polly was committed on July 4th. The records I was able to access as a family member are fairly spotty, but they seem to indicate that she was a model patient. Officially, she was being treated for bipolar disorder, but I wasn't able to find any full-time psychologists or psychiatrists registered to the facility. Government regulations say that's not quite legal, but the facility she was in had religious exemptions from inspection."  
  
"So basically, it's a hospital run by shady nuns," I summarized. "Did anybody investigate her disappearance?"  
  
Betty snorted derisively. The sound was so thoroughly at odds with her rather ladylike demeanor that I almost laughed. "The official explanation for her disappearance is here on the form. ' _After months of treatment, it appears that our heavenly aid has been in vain. Satan has finally gained a foothold in this weak and malleable soul, and has escaped our holy restraints to work his wickedness and sin upon the world._ ' To simplify, their investigation turned up that she was possessed by the devil and ran off. End of story, no further information needed."  
  
I chuckled a little at that. "Okay. So that's the gist of the official documents. What's the rest?"  
  
She pawed through it for a moment. "The typewritten stuff is some job applications Polly sent me to look over while I was at school. It's all dated June, so before she was committed, but I thought it might indicate that she was looking into leaving home. They're all for Canada, actually. The rest is correspondence between us. I brought everything I could find from within the past year or so. I don't know how much it will help, though, because she doesn't mention anything unusual, mostly."  
  
I seized on the last bit. "Mostly?"  
  
"The last one is dated June 21st, and she talks about having a surprise waiting for me when I get home," Betty elaborated, her eyes narrowing slightly as she leaned across the table towards me.  
  
"When's your birthday?" I asked offhandedly.  
  
"December. She wouldn't have started on plans yet."  
  
There were a number of things that surprise could have been, and almost none of them were good. "Thanks for meeting me here," I said, gathering up the papers into their folder. "Can I take these and do some thinking, then get back to you with some next steps?"  
  
"Sure," Betty acquiesced. She gathered her purse and wrap, before suddenly freezing stock-still as if she had just remembered something. "Mr. Jones?"  
  
"Call me Jughead," I said impulsively. I realized a fraction of a second too late that I really shouldn't have done that, especially since she was clearly going through tough times, and if I acted like an asshole I was going to make things tougher--  
  
"Only if you call me Betty," she declared resolutely.  
  
"Alright, then. No comments about my name?"  
  
"Not since you got mad when I questioned your taste in hats. Listen, I think my ride is gone alre--is otherwise occupied," she finished softly as I opened the door. I took a moment and glanced behind me to see what she was talking about, and was rewarded with the vague impression of red hair and pearl necklace and black dress all pressed up against a wall together. Nothing much besides kissing seemed to be going on, but that probably wasn't the main thought on Betty's mind at the moment.  
  
When I turned back around, Betty didn't notice. She was still staring at Archie and Veronica with a look of pure, innocent, almost hopeful longing. As I watched, it gradually darkened to anger and disgust. Her hands began to curl up into fists.

I took a step to the left, just enough to block the couple out of her field of view. "Are you alright, Betty?" I asked.  
  
Betty took a deep breath and uncurled her fists, shaking herself slightly. Her face drooped little in sad resignation. "Sorry about that. I'm fine. Anyway, it looks like I don't have a ride--I mean, not that I necessarily expected one--you know how it is. Would you mind staying until I can find a cab?"  
  
"I'll drive you," I offered.  
  
She told me she couldn't impose; I insisted that she wouldn't be imposing. She said she'd better tell Archie where she was going, I told her that she said she didn't want to be coddled, so if I was honest, he probably wouldn't hear her if she told him with a bullhorn. She laughed a little bitterly, let me get her coat for her, and followed me out to my car.  
  
The drive back was fairly short, and I guessed that she'd probably want to be left alone. I was wrong, of course.  
  
"So, how long have you been investigating?" she asked the instant we were both in the car, leaning her head against the window and looking outside as I started the engine.  
  
"Well, my dad used to work for the police, but he got laid off and started up a private investigation business. So I did some work on some of his cases when I was younger. But I've only been working on my own for a few years." She was a good listener, I found: the sort of easy-to-talk-to person who makes you feel like they're listening just by sitting there.  
  
"Is it fun?" she asked, out of the blue.  
  
"No," I said with a shrug. "Is journalism fun?"  
  
"No. But it makes a difference."  
  
"Same here."  
  
There was silence for a while.  
  
“So what do you like?” I asked, if only to keep the conversation going.  
  
“Cooking?” she suggested. “I was on my college’s track team, and I like tinkering around with old cars. But I’ve really gotten into cooking, recently. Maybe it’s just because, in cooking, if you follow the recipe, everything works out. And then, if you change little things, sometimes it makes everything better.”  
  
Somehow, I got the sense that cooking was turning into a metaphor. “What do you like to cook?”  
  
Betty took a moment to think. “Everything?” she said helplessly.  
  
“Not an answer.”  
  
“Okay, then. Um, I like doing casseroles? No, actually, I have one better. I like making quiche.”  
  
“Quiche,” I repeated, as my eyebrows made a leap for my hat.  
  
“What?” she laughed defensively.  
  
“Nothing,” I shrugged. “You just strike me as more of a fruit cobbler sort of person. You know, sugar and spice and everything nice?”  
  
“I’m going to have to disagree with you, Mr. Jo— _Jughead_ ,” she corrected herself. “Fruit cobblers are what you make when you feel too lazy to make an actual pie. Quiche is an art form. You have to balance the flavors, add the right spices, cook the eggs just right, and don’t even let me get into the amount of work I did trying to find a crust that would contrast the texture of the eggs while still holding up to them.”  
  
“Alright, I admit defeat. Maybe when all this is over, you can make me a quiche.”  
  
“Okay,” she said. “If only to make you see reason.”  
  
“Hey,” I insisted loudly. “I didn’t say fruit cobbler was better than quiche. I said you seemed like you were the sort of person who would make a mean fruit cobbler.”  
  
She laughed a little. “Maybe I do. Maybe you do.”  
  
“Maybe I do,” I echoed. “Hey, when the scandal’s all dead and buried, we’ll each make both and compare notes.”  
  
"You know," she said, and stopped.  
  
"What?" I asked, making a tricky turn.  
  
"You stay on this street for a while, and then turn on to Maple Road," she supplied, noticing automatically that I'd reached the end of her driving directions. Then she lapsed back into an abstracted silence.  
  
After a moment of pensive thought, in which I focused solely on the road in front of me, and not at all on her profile against the lamplight, she turned in the seat and flopped over to face me. "I'm not in this to cover the scandal up, or whatever it is people hire detectives for these days. No matter what the real story is, that's the one I want told."  
  
"I know," I said, startled into truthfulness.  
  
Her eyebrows scrunched up again. It was a facial expression that I was coming to associate with her: that look of absolute puzzlement. "How would you know?"  
  
"I'm a detective?" I suggested helplessly.  
  
She laughed loudly. It wasn't the sort of laugh that Ethel and Ronnie had. It was sweeter, somehow, like a mountain spring might be in relation to the bottled water that everyone always swears comes straight from mountain springs but everyone knows doesn't. "Park here," she requested.  
  
There wasn't a house in sight. "Are you sure?"  
  
"My parents aren't excited about me having actual human beings to spend time with. If you don't mind?"

I parked. "Thank you for the ride," she said, smiling a little, even though she was probably going through at least ten different stages of grief and heartbreak at the moment.  
  
"You're welcome," I said, taking in all I could of the way the moonlight hit her skin and turned it silver, while simultaneously mentally reproving myself for going poetic and sappy in the middle of a case. She shut the door and walked off, vanishing behind the corner of a big red-brick building.

And just like that, the night was over. I turned my car around and drove back home, with every line of her stamped on my eyelids and every word she spoke ringing through my ears.  
  
Yep. I would be a horrible detective if I didn't realize what was going on with me. I had it, and I had it _bad_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you guys so much for sending love on previous chapters! Be sure to let me know what you think of this one!


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jughead meets Archie, and learns of a terrifying event involving Betty

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> GUESS WHO GOT INTO HER TOP CHOICE COLLEGE!?!?
> 
> In other news, RIVERDALE IS BACK TONIGHT!!!!!!!
> 
> Sorry, I'm overexcited, I guess. Also sorry for the long wait for this chapter! Be sure to leave a comment! (and my inbox is always open for anybody who needs to fangirl over the Bughead cuteness we are about to witness!)

At nine AM the next morning, I was faintly surprised when Archie Andrews pulled up to the curb by my office, got out of his car, and pounded on the door until he realized that it wasn't locked.  
  
He burst inside with all the subtlety of a pickup truck, and didn't collect himself enough to be polite until several seconds after he had opened the door to my office. "Mr. Jones," he said. "I want to talk to you."  
  
"And you are?" I asked nonchalantly, pretending as if I knew of more than one redhead with a reason to barge into my office.  
  
He squinted for a moment. "Oh. Sorry. Archie Andrews. I'm a friend of Miss Cooper."  
  
"Jughead Jones. I'm a friend of Miss Lodge, who I understand you're acquainted with."  
  
Archie flushed a delicate roseate pink. It clashed badly with his hair. "Yeah. I--know of her. That's not what I'm here to discuss. I'm here for Betty."  
  
That seemed off. "Here for Betty as in, 'Betty sent you,' or here for Betty in some other context?" Betty had kicked him out of the room at the Blue and Gold before I showed up. If she was planning to involve him in the case, she would have wanted him in there with us. Besides, he'd shown up too belligerently for someone delivering a message: all in all, this didn't look good.  
  
He pulled up the yellow armchair, quickly and without apparent exertion. When he sat down in it, he loomed over me, but his posture was faintly uncertain: he had a sense of what he was trying to do, but he hadn't figured out yet how to go about it. "Listen, I've known Betty for a long time. This--" he gestured vaguely around the office "--isn't good for her. So I came to tell you to back off."  
  
I raised an eyebrow and leaned back in my chair. "You do realize that telling a private detective to back off is like putting up a big sign that says, ' _Please, come one, come all, and ferret out all the secrets that I desperately don't want you to discover!_ ' I mean, you can't have thought that would work."  
  
"I'm willing to pay," he offered, stiffening his jaw.  
  
That was just plain insulting. "Sorry, just to clarify, are you trying to _bribe_ me now? Have you ever bribed someone in your life before?"  
  
"Betty's my best friend. I'm willing to do whatever it takes to help her," Archie insisted, with a little determined furrow to his forehead as if he had spent a few hours practicing that sentence in the mirror.  
  
This guy was getting on my nerves. "Listen, Mr. Andrews. I believe in the truth. It's my job as a detective to help people find the truth. Are you trying to pay me to keep someone from searching for the truth?"  
  
"You don't understand," Archie insisted hotly, jumping up from the armchair. "Betty was happy, until this happened. But this--this thing with Polly is consuming her _life_. She's out at all hours of the night, she's spending half the day in the attic digging up old papers--I mean, look, it isn't your business. You look like you're a good guy. I'm asking you to accept money to save someone's life."  
  
I took a moment, even though I was fairly sure about what I had to do. Something wasn't quite right in that description--  
  
"What do you mean, Miss Cooper was happy?"  
  
His mouth froze, gaping slightly like a fish's might. "Wh--"  
  
I sat a little forward, hemming him in just ever so slightly closer. "You're her best friend, right?"  
  
He'd managed to recover his composure. "Of course, I'm her best friend. I mean, why would she not be _happy_? Did she tell you something?"  
  
Of course, I couldn't tell him about the marks I'd seen on Betty's hands; that would be a breach of trust, and I needed to deserve her trust. "Miss Cooper didn't tell me anything." That was true. "I'm a detective. I know things," I added, stating the obvious with a mysterious air.  
  
Archie gaped, only slightly less obviously. After he felt he'd spent enough time gaping, he proceeded to make an laudable attempt to collect himself. Then he ruined it all by jumping several inches in the air when the phone rang.  
  
"Twilight Investigations," I answered, shooting him a glare. He flushed redder, but didn't even bother to look at me.  
  
"Jug," Veronica answered without further preamble, "do you actually know that kid you brought in last night?"  
  
"Hello to you too, V. Why are you asking?"  
  
"Are you alone?" In my years as Veronica Lodge's friend, I had heard her drawl, hiss, purr, coo, simper, pout, and snarl. I had never once heard her sound frightened--except I was beginning to think today might be the day.  
  
"No, Ron, I've got your last night's boy toy. He says he knows of you. How sensitive is this?"  
  
"Kick Carrots out. Do it now." Veronica retorted tersely.  
  
"I'm sorry," I informed Archie around the mouthpiece of the phone, "but I need you to step outside into the waiting room for a moment."  
  
Archie looked for a second as if he intended to pick up my desk and slam it against the wall. Then he shrugged, stood up, and walked out. I turned back to the phone. "Room's clear. What's the problem?"  
  
"Chuck Clayton's the problem. He and that girl went in a private room last night--"  
  
I saw red. " _Clayton_? I can't believe--Listen, Ron, I need you to cover me for the cops if Clay--"  
  
"Clayton's in that private room right now, passed out from an overdose, with a minor head wound that's bleeding all over my table. The only person that's been in or out is your client from last night, in a black bob wig and a dress you'd have to see on her to believe."  
  
There was no way Betty had done that, I decided, taking a deep breath and calming myself. I had seen her get out of the car, far away from the Blue and Gold-- _but not at her house,_ my detective instinct whispered, _you saw her get out in an alley, she could easily have gone straight back to the Blue and Gold, but with an alibi this time_.  
  
I told my detective instinct to shut up. "How bad is the OD? Is he going to make it?" I couldn't care less if Clayton died, but a death meant an investigation, which meant the police, which meant trouble.  
  
Veronica snorted. "He'll live. I'm stitching him up the best I can now."  
  
A sudden thought occurred to me. "Ron, are you sure it was my client and not her sister? I'm told they look alike--"  
  
Veronica scoffed. "Girls only look the same to guys, Jug. Ask Ethel if you don't believe me."  
  
"Ethel?"  
  
Ron sighed exasperatedly. "If you'd given me any time before you jumped in with questions, I would have mentioned that Ethel was the one who paid for the private room. She gave me the money, took the key, and walked out, Jug, and if I knew why, I'd tell you, so don't you dare ask me why."  
  
"Sure, V. Listen, do you need me to come over, or would you rather keep a low profile?" Having me visit the Blue and Gold during the day probably wasn't the best idea, since nobody but Veronica and the staff were there during the day usually. One of Clayton's guys might get suspicious--  
  
"Hold on, Jug. I have to go. Now." If I thought Veronica had sounded frightened, earlier, she sounded positively panicky now.  
  
"Ron--?" My breath caught.  
  
"Police," she hissed. And then, a moment later, "They have a warrant, Jug, I'm gonna go let them in." Veronica took a deep, shaky breath, but her voice when she spoke next sounded much steadier. She was preparing to put on a show. "If I don't call you back in the next two hours come over and check things out, okay?"  
  
"'Kay," I agreed, numbly, as the line went dead.  
  
I put the phone back down and leaned back in my chair, spinning it all the way around listlessly. There had to be some sort of explanation for Betty's involvement. I wasn't worried about Ron; she had dealt with police before and come out on top. But I needed to know what had actually happened at the Blue and Gold last night before I could figure out what to do, which meant I had to call Ethel.  
  
The universe had other plans, though. When my chair faced front again for the fourth time, Archie Andrews was back in the yellow armchair. "Mr. Jones. Look, what can I do to convince you to accept my offer?"  
  
"Is 'nothing' a viable answer?" I deadpanned, taking a moment to wonder how anybody found time to deal with Archie Andrews in the course of their busy lives.  
  
"I'm not going to leave until you agree to convince Betty to stop the investigation!" he insisted, crossing his arms in what he must have imagined was a heroic posture.  
  
"I don't have time for you today, Mr. Andrews. If you want me to keep on investigating Miss Cooper's case, the absolute best way to go about it is to do what you're doing, and keep distracting me from all my other cases by sitting in here," I snapped, standing up from the chair and picking up my briefcase. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go see a witness."  
  
Somehow, it never occurred to him to jump up and block the doorway. He just kept on sitting there, stubbornly staring at the back wall like a marble statue with a red wig on top. I let him, since there really wasn't anything worth looking at in the room, unless you count the file cabinets (locked and filled with dummy files, since I keep my files in my briefcase), and the meager assortment of books and house plants. He was more than welcome to it.  
  
I headed for Ethel's apartment at a moderate, restrained pace that nearly got me pulled over for speeding. The building was ratty and dilapidated, and the landlord hated me, so I weighed the two evils--falling off of the rickety fire escape at the back, or braving Weatherbee's stinkeye--and picked the stinkeye.  
  
My luck was in; Weatherbee was out. Ethel's roommate Ginger answered the door and leaned against the frame to block my path.  
  
"Morning, Jug. Haven't seen you round. Ethel's sick."  
  
Ethel bragged about having the constitution of a horse. I cleared my throat. "Tell Ethel I know about Clayton last night."  
  
Ginger vanished behind the door and then reappeared a moment later, jutting out her jaw stubbornly. "Ethel says she doesn't know what you mean."  
  
"Look, nobody's in any trouble, and the cops are over trying to bust up Ron. C'mon, Ginger. Off the record, I swear."  
  
She eyed me warily and disappeared again, leaving the door open this time. Taking it as a victory, I poked my head inside as Ginger retired from the living room/kitchen to the bathroom/bedroom. "Ethel?"  
  
Ethel stood up from the couch. "Jug." Somehow, she didn't sound too happy to see me: more resigned than anything else.  
  
"Ron just called, Ethel," I said, advancing across the floor. "Clayton OD'd in a private room you rented? I mean, were you even trying to cover your tracks? You need to tell me what happened, so we can make a plan for this--Ethel, what the hell were you thinking?"  
  
The doors of Ethel's face slammed shut tighter than I'd ever seen them slam. "Jug, blackmailing Clayton didn't work, going to the police didn't work, and beating him up didn't work. What-- _I_ did last night is going to work. I asked for your help, and it didn't stop him, and this did stop him. Are you judging me?"  
  
I plopped down on her couch and sighed, noting the pause Ethel gave before 'I'. "Ethel, Clayton's backed by the Blossoms. I'm trying to help you."  
  
Ethel's shoulders relaxed a tad. "I know Clayton's backed, but I need you to trust me, Jugs. I know what I'm doing. Listen, read the paper tomorrow, okay? I swear, it'll all make sense then."  
  
The paper. Maybe Betty was just in the room to report on what happened; it would be just like Ethel to go overboard on a disguise, Ethel could have gone in the room by a back way--I forced myself to look at the facts as I knew them. Ethel rented a room; Betty and Clayton went in; Betty came out; Clayton was found OD'd with a head wound.  
  
"Okay," I said, standing up, watching Ethel's frame slump a little in relief. "By the way," I asked casually, "I hear you met my client last night."  
  
Ethel's nose wrinkled up a little, but she showed no other reaction. "I didn't see much of her. Mostly, it was the redhead, trying to shoo her around."  
  
"The redhead's camped out in my office right now, trying to bribe me to back off the case," I informed her.  
  
"You're kidding."  
  
"Nope. Did you get a read on the client?" Ethel was as good a judge of people as I was: she could figure someone out in two seconds flat, and if she had so much as seen Betty, she'd have a good sense of her.  
  
"Nope," said Ethel, holding herself perfectly still. That was the thing about Ethel--she was so afraid of having a tell that she always stiffened up when she lied. She probably had a very good read of Betty; knowing Ethel, she had one the instant she saw her. But right now, Ethel was imagining that, if she _had_ barely interacted with Betty, she _wouldn't_ have gotten any read, and so she told me she hadn't gotten a read.  
  
Having worked my mind around this complicated twist of reasoning, I came up with two conclusions. Firstly, Betty and Ethel had talked last night, much more than I had assumed they did. Secondly, something in that talk had led to what happened to Chuck Clayton, and that was why Ethel was lying.  
  
I said goodbye to Ethel and drove back in a funk. When I got in my office, Archie was still in the chair, doing a crossword. "Don't you have somewhere to be?" I asked, if only for the sake of making conversation.  
  
"Nah," he said, and left it at that. I pulled Betty's card out of my wallet as I sat down at the desk, and dialed the number.  
  
"Hello," a decidedly-not-Betty voice answered, friendly in a chilly sort of way, like frosted sugar, but with arsenic mixed in. I made a spur-of-the-moment decision to eternally hate the voice's owner.  
  
"I'm calling for Betty Cooper," I announced, failing to match the voice for sweetness, chilliness, or venom.  
  
Archie perked up at the name and tried to catch me in a football tackle. He forgot to account for the desk in his calculations, though, and crashed on the top of it. I looked daggers at him as he struggled up from the floor.  
  
"Do I know you?" the voice asked suspiciously.  
  
"No, ma'am," I replied, feeling like I did in school whenever I hadn't done my homework. With a sudden flash of inspiration, I added, "I'm calling on behalf of my cousin, Jane. She's a friend of Betty's from school, and she was hoping to invite her to a party she's throwing? A chaperoned party, of course," I clarified a moment later, "my aunt is very much against debauchery of any sort. May I speak to Betty to give her the details?"  
  
Archie was up from the floor, but he was too busy nursing his bruises in the armchair to make another pass at the phone.  
  
"I assume we can expect the details on a formal invitation, sent in the mail," the voice replied pointedly.  
  
In hindsight, I really should have thought of that. Luckily, I was saved from answering by an "Excuse me for a moment," followed quickly by an urgent, albeit muffled conversation.  
  
"Hello?" said Betty's voice after a moment. "Hi, John! How's--"  
  
I interrupted before she could blow my cover. "My cousin Jane is great, she's throwing a party, so now I have to rustle up a formal invitation to send to whoever it was that answered the phone, which I assume was your mother. Is she still in the room?"  
  
"Yeah!" said Betty enthusiastically.  
  
"Okay. Listen, I need to talk to you, somewhere your mom isn't listening. When can you get out?"  
  
"I don't know, John, that might be kind of difficult. I could see her at her office, if she's in today. I'm just about to leave for Mass, but I can drop by afterwards." Her voice was grating on my nerves, falsely bright and cheery in an unsettling way.  
  
"That sounds good. I've got an unwanted squatter at the office, though, so once you get here, we might have to drive a bit. By the way, Betty, do you know anyone named Chuck Clayton?" It wasn't like she could say much, but at least it might give me a sense of whether she was willing to talk--  
  
"Sort of. I can't really remember at the moment. We'll talk later, alright?"  
  
There wasn't much else I could say. "Okay. Bye."  
  
I glared at Archie. Archie glowered back, then decided to give up on the feud and smile for a change.  
  
"Since we're both stuck here for the next few hours," Archie said after a few moments, "do you want to hear some of my songs?"  
  
I stalked out to my waiting room to kill time in peace.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bughead forever, people!


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Jughead finds out the truth about the Clayton incident (no thanks to Archie).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Enjoy Riverdale tonight! (Last episode of Bughead happiness before conflict sets in...)

I had resolved to steadily ignore Archie for as long as he insisted on making himself a nuisance, but he didn't give me that choice. Thus, I was only five minutes into the contemplation of my waiting room chairs (combined with an investigation into whether they were designed by torturers during the Spanish Inquisition, or torturers during the reign of Bloody Mary), when a familiar red head poked out of the door. "Oh, good," it said. "You're still here." I closed my eyes for a moment and blissfully imagined strapping Archie into a waiting-room chair of his own.  
  
"Yes, I am. Is something the matter?"  
  
Archie maneuvered himself out of the doorway. "Uh, yeah. Sorry. Um, phone's for you?" he said awkwardly. And then, after another moment, "It's Ver--Miss Lodge," he hastily amended.  
  
I was in the office as soon as I could make it past Archie. He seemed to have largely given up on obstructing the workings of justice, though, or maybe he hadn't realized that the situation with Veronica was connected to Betty's case. I was inclining towards the latter, based on my understanding of his intelligence level, but I considered it still open to interpretation. Either way, though, it was a definite blessing.  
  
"Hey, Ron. Do you need me to put up bail?" It was probably better to get that question over with, just in case--it would save her the trouble of trying to ask without hurting her pride.  
  
Ronnie scoffed. "Oh, please. Like you could."  
  
I probably couldn't have, but I protested a bit anyway before settling down to business. "What'd the cops want?"  
  
"Guess," Veronica suggested coyly.  
  
" _Ron!_ "  
  
"No, they didn't want me, even in the third person. Guess again." She was positively smirking now, like the cat that got the cream, swallowed the canary, and chased it down with a plate of caviar and a superb vintage of claret (then had strawberries and whipped cream for dessert).  
  
"To give you a medal for being a model citizen," I deadpanned.  
  
"Well, I am the very model of a modern model citizen--" Ron began, but gave up before she had to find a rhyme. "Fine. They had a warrant for Chuck Clayton's arrest."  
  
I let out a breath I hadn't noticed I was holding, listening as it whistled through my teeth on the way out, puffing out my lips a bit. Then I shook my head to clear myself up and get myself back on track. "Did you hear the charges?"  
  
There was a fumbling noise on the other line. "I wrote it down, give me a sec--oh, here it is, um, assault and battery, violation of a restraining order, solicitation, and robbery."  
  
"Damn," I said. "How come they finally got wise to him? I mean, they didn't listen to me, or Nancy, or Ethel--" I stopped suddenly. "Ron, you wouldn't happen to know what happened, would you?" I asked suspiciously.  
  
" _Me?_ " said Veronica. On the other end of the line, she was probably widening her eyes and putting her hand up against her chest innocently, like she did whenever someone dared to suggest that anything illegal, whatsoever, had gone on, or could ever go on, at her beloved, _completely_ legal, _very_ above-ground bar.  
  
I leaned against the desk. "Ron, I have someone else coming who's more than happy to give me an explanation." That wasn't completely true, but I was definitely hoping Betty would be able to clear some of this up. "So you may as well just spill."  
  
"Nuh-uh," said Veronica, sounding like a particularly stubborn, yet sophisticated toddler. "Girl code, Jug."  
  
"Okay, Ron, Ethel had me looking into Clayton before any of this went down. I know he's just about the furthest thing from angelic you could get if you walked down the streets of Riverdale with a net and caught random passers-by. So what the hell went down last night, and why wasn't I involved?" I was getting frustrated, and it was showing. Archie, who seemed to have experimented with the waiting-room chairs and decided torture wasn't his style, shot me a pitying glance from the sofa. I ignored him and turned away.  
  
Veronica sighed heavily. "Sorry, Jug, but I can't tell you what went down, because we compartmentalized the details. And you weren't involved because you wouldn't have approved--"  
  
I tried to cut in, but she continued talking, steamrollering right over me, "--and don't even try to say that we couldn't have known you wouldn't approve if we didn't tell you, because you wouldn't have interrogated everyone involved unless you didn't approve. If you approve, then stop asking questions, Jug."  
  
I decided not to waste time puzzling out what she'd just said. "Who's 'we', Ron? You said 'we'."  
  
She gave that information up without a fight, probably because she knew I knew already. "Me, Ethel, and--fine, I'll say it, your client. Last night wasn't the first time I've seen her at the Blue and Gold, even if it is the first time I've seen her out from undercover. I figured out she was a journo on her first night, but she seemed like someone who really wanted to do good things, and, I mean, who am I to stop her? So I gave her some tips on keeping cover and let her stay. She started looking into the Clayton thing when she saw him beating on Cricket O'Dell, and from then on, she was hooked."  
  
I took a moment to process this startling inflow of information. "Let me get this straight. My client has been undercover at the Blue and Gold, gathering information on Clayton, for _how_ long?"  
  
Ronnie took a moment, then seemed to give up on keeping things quiet. "Four weeks. Ever since she got back from college. She told me she was trying to find a good story that she could get printed, and then she could get her foot in the door for the major investigative stuff."  
  
"So after Clayton got Ginger, you guys set this up," I finished.  
  
"They set it up. I just provided the room," Veronica said, with a tone that might have been haughty if it was anyone else. Then she switched to wheedling. "Listen, Jug, it all worked out. Can you just trust us? If you don't trust your client, trust me and Ethel. We know what we're about."  
  
Somehow, that wasn't all that comforting, but it sparked another thought. "Okay, but if you knew what you were about, then why were you so upset on the phone this morning?"  
  
I could as good as feel Veronica tense up. "It didn't go down quite the way I expected," she hedged, then clarified, "Ethel called me and cleared the situation up." She continued, much more lightly, "By the way, what's Archiekins doing answering your phone? If you wanted a secretary, I would've thought you'd go for something less stylish and more functional."  
  
"He's trying to get me to turn down the Cooper case," I sighed, unwilling to tell Veronica the whole story in front of Archie, since it looked like I'd be dealing with him for the foreseeable future. "If I want a secretary, I'll ask you for recommendations first. Call if any trouble picks up over the Clayton debacle, will you? And send Nance my sympathy."  
  
"Are you kidding? I'm sending a letter of congratulations," Veronica declared. "If he goes behind bars, we're throwing a 'your-dirtbag-husband-can-never-touch-you-again-let-alone-beat-up-street-girls-who-don't-work-for-the-Blossoms-and-steal-their-cash-to-buy-booze' party at her place. You're invited if you stop being so holier-than-thou about this mess."  
  
"It's a bit of a mouthful for a party name, but I'll check my schedule," I joked half-heartedly as I hung up.  
  
When the phone was down, I heaved a bit of a sigh. This entire situation was infuriating, and two of my best friends were caught up in it (not to mention the girl I had somehow, unaccountably, decided to take a liking to), and moreover, everyone involved was being so tight-lipped that I wanted to scream.  
  
Archie sat up on the sofa a little. "Do you want advice? You seem upset, and I know we're kind of on opposite sides, but if you need someone to talk to, it's not like I have anything better to do."  
  
I gave him my best withering glance. "If you want to be helpful, you could always consider leaving."  
  
"Not a chance," he insisted resolutely.  
  
We sat there in silence for another moment, before I decided I'd be better off calling Ethel to apologize for being an ass. "Listen, I have to talk to a friend of mine. This isn't about Polly Cooper, scout's honor. Can I have the room, seeing as I'm the one paying rent?"  
  
He narrowed his eyes at me suspiciously. "You seem like a great guy, honestly, and all this detecting stuff looks really cool, but you've got to understand that I really like Betty, even though I have a girlfriend, and--" I leveled him a glance, and his skin started trying to match his hair. (It was a lost cause from the start, in my opinion.) "I mean, it's not like that, I'm more of a family friend, to Betty, that is--" I cut him off before he could get his foot any farther down his gullet.  
  
"I get it. Duty calls. Protecting innocence and virtue or whatever. I'm just calling a friend to apologize about a fight we got into." He relaxed considerably and started shuffling out, only to pause in the doorway.  
  
"Wait, you're an investigator, right?" he asked hesitantly, dropping what looked to be a good ten years off his demeanor. "Have you ever arrested someone?"  
  
So he was one of _those_ types--desperate for any taste of the adventurous cowboy lifestyle that misinformed people always assumed I lived. "I'm not a police officer, but I've made citizen's arrests. So can just about anyone else, if a felony is committed and there's probable cause."  
  
He wasn't done yet. "Have you ever broken a code?" Eagerness and curiosity were glinting in the depths of his eyes.  
  
"The correct term is cipher, but the answer's yes. A handful of Playfair, three Vigenére, and a really tricky autokey that may as well have been Chaocipher."  
  
"Have you ever killed someone?" he asked, now openly admiring.  
  
"The sign says Twilight Investigations, not Twilight Assassinations. Are you giving me the room or not?"  
  
"Do you know how to break into places?"  
  
"Are you giving me the room?"   
  
"Sorry!" Archie squeaked, closing the door.  
  
I dialed Ethel, who picked up without too much delay. "Hello?"  
  
"Hi. Listen, I'm sorry I acted judgmental over the Clayton thing. I get that you have it handled, and I'm sorry I doubted you." When it came to groveling, I had learned it was always better to start big.  
  
"Thanks, Jug, that's really sweet. Is this 'cause Ron talked some sense into you?" Ethel questioned.  
  
Of course Ethel would know that. "Yeah. Chewed me out, actually," I admitted, still trying to minimize damage to my ego. "I was just worried. Still am, actually, but I'll back off if you need."  
  
"I appreciate it. I'm sorry I got so defensive. I just kind of want the whole mess to be _over_ , y'know?" She sounded tired, and vulnerable, and not at all like the girl who'd found me and Jelly on the streets our first week and shared her food with us, not at all like the person who'd taught me how to fight dirty, who'd made it her business to make sure that the kids who didn't want to work for the Blossoms didn't have to, who stole textbooks from the library to lend to anyone who wanted them, who had always had my back because we were friends, who looked out for the kids on the street because it wasn't like anyone else was going to.  
  
"Course I know, Ethel. I wasn't mad at you at all. Just don't lie to me again, is all, 'kay?"  
  
There was a dreadful pause, during which I wondered if I might have just ruined my friendship with Ethel. Then Ethel laughed, long, loud, and ruefully, and I knew that all was forgiven. "I shouldn't have tried to keep secrets from a PI, I guess."  
  
I smiled despite myself. "Live and learn, Muggs. So Betty was involved?"  
  
"Yeah," Ethel sighed. "I met her through Ron. She was trying to get Cricket to go on the record about Clayton, so I offered to help her hunt up some evidence. We decided the police wouldn't listen unless we got a confession, so we picked a night and decided to make a play."  
  
"Hence the wig and the dress?" I inquired.  
  
"The wig was for one of her undercover personas, but yeah. Seriously, Jug, I don't think she meant to hurt Clayton, and I'm pretty sure she didn't know how strong the pills she gave him were. She said it was her mother's sleep medication." Ethel sounded almost laughably maternal, considering that she and Betty were probably the same age.  
  
"Ethel, can you walk me through what happened? And what was supposed to happen instead?" I tried.  
  
"Yeah. But you've got to promise that you won't tell anyone, and that--that you won't think of Betty any differently," she finished in a rush.  
  
"Promise," I agreed, soberly.  
  
"Okay. The plan was, I'd rent the room ahead of time. I told Ron that it was to do with Clayton, but she couldn't tell a soul. You know how she likes secrets," Ethel added by way of explanation.  
  
"She knew you guys were making a play that night?"  
  
"Yeah, but we figured that it was better if we kept it between the two of us, so we told Ronnie it was easier if she didn't know any specifics. She thought that bit was really exciting, right up until she found Clayton this morning. The plan was, Betty'd make a play for Clayton, since he didn't know her well enough to figure out what was up. Then we'd lock him in the private room, and refuse to let him out until we got his confession on tape."  
  
I had to admit that the plan didn't sound as risky as it had ended up being. "What was the play once you got the tape?"  
  
Ethel rattled it off with ease. "Betty was gonna drop the tape by the police station as an anonymous tip, with a note saying that if they didn't arrest him on the strength of that evidence within the next few days, then the story'd go public."  
  
That made sense. "Okay. So then what went wrong?"  
  
Ethel's voice lowered to a hushed whisper. "Betty snapped." She clarified in her normal tone, "First of all, the OD was because we wanted his tongue nice and loose, so I said she should slip him the mickey, and so she must have overcalculated his tolerance. She wasn't trying to kill him, Jug, and you know the bastard deserved every bit of what he got."  
  
"I know, Ethel. But the head wound was her? What set her off?"  
  
Ethel sighed. "Clayton found her sister on the streets. See, we'd just about finished the tape of the confession, and we were having him list all the people he could remember that he'd hurt. We tried to get him to give up the Blossoms but no going there--anyway, Polly was on the list. Her face just burned up, Jug. I've never seen anything like it--it was like she was a whole different person. And then when I turned off the recorder, she just lunged at him."  
  
I bit my lip. "Lunged how?"  
  
"Lunged as in grabbed him and banged his head on the table. She just kept on asking, 'What did you do to Polly?'"  
  
"What did he do to Polly?" I asked, forcing myself to remain neutral, as if it had been someone I'd never met. Besides, I reminded myself, Clayton had deserved it.  
  
"It varied. First he said he beat her up and robbed her, like he did the other girls. Then, after the head wound, he said something about how she was the boss's girl, and so he just roughed her up a bit and turned her over to the boss. Then he said he murdered her, then he said he was completely innocent. By that time, the pills must've kicked in a bit," Ethel mused.  
  
"Yeah. Sounds like they kicked in, alright," I observed sarcastically. "So then you guys left?"  
  
"I took the back way out, and Betty walked out the front. Listen, I know she probably needs a shrink, but I'd go on the stand for her if it came to that." That was something. If Ethel was willing to defend someone that strongly, even after seeing them fly completely off the handle, then--well, then maybe my admiration for Betty was still justifiable. Maybe.  
  
"Probably not going to be necessary, but thanks. That means a lot. I'm talking to Betty later today, so if Clayton squeals about the coercion, we'll make plans. Thanks for trusting me."  
  
"Stay safe, Jug."  
  
"You too, though I imagine that's going to be a hell of a lot easier with Clayton gone. Have you told Nance?" I asked. Even if Clayton was the scum of the earth, somebody should probably tell his wife he'd been arrested.  
  
"I'm on my way over right now, and I think V's planning on buying flowers. I'm just glad that everyone's going to be a whole lot safer from here on out," Ethel finished softly.  
  
"Yeah. Doesn't mean the Blossoms won't fight back," I warned.  
  
"One step at a time, Jug. Besides, it's gonna take them a while to explain that confession. It was a work of _art--_ one hundred percent airtight. You'd have loved it."  
  
I probably would have. "Well, I won't keep you from Nancy any longer."  
  
"Bye, Jug."  
  
"Bye," I finished, hanging the phone up and leaning back in my chair. I closed my eyes and tried to fit it all together, to envision the private room last night: Ethel in a shadowy corner with an audio recorder, Chuck Clayton, bent over the table with blood trickling down his temple. Betty, sunshiny, intelligent, and _real_ , somehow transfigured into an avenging angel, her face drawn up and distorted with burning rage.  
  
The most frightening thing about the prospect was how easily I could picture it.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Confrontations, a hoard of treasure, and a stakeout.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi everyone! I'm going out of town, so I'm posting this extra long chapter to tide you guys over till I'm back. So glad this fic has been so incredibly well-received! (Seriously, you guys are the BEST.)

By the time Betty showed up (an hour and a half after I hung up with Ethel), I was thoroughly sick of Archie Andrews. No, I was beyond thoroughly sick: I was one hundred and ten percent exasperated. Unfortunately, Archie had yet to pick up on that simple fact.  
  
He spoke from a reclined position that gave my sofa the appearance of a therapy couch. "Okay, but, it's got to be more exciting than that. I mean, I read a serial where--"  
  
I cut him off. "Andrews, you're off-base. Nothing in a serial is ever true." I could have gone into detail on that, since I had once been an avid consumer of such fare, but I figured it was best not to encourage him in case he decided to stick around.  
  
"Do you carry a gun?" he asked, switching the subject.  
  
"Nope," I lied.  
  
"But have you carried one?" he probed.  
  
"Kid, if you're interested in gun ownership, ask the NRA," I sidestepped.  
  
He scowled, sitting up rod-straight and spinning to face me as if the armrest had mortally offended him. "I'm not a kid! There's no way I'm much younger than you are!"  
  
Well, that was probably true, but I wasn't going to let it stop me. "You act like a kid. So I'm calling you one."  
  
"How old are you?" he challenged.  
  
I batted my eyelashes mockingly. "A gentleman never tells."  
  
He started gearing up for a retort that was either going to be confused or nasty; neither of us was particularly sure which it would end up being. We lost the opportunity to find out forever when the door opened, and Betty Cooper appeared, silhouetted against the light and nearly out of breath, with her golden hair tumbling down around her shoulders and her hat nearly falling off her head. "Oh, I'm sorry, do you have a client? I didn't mean to-- _Archie_?" Her voice crept up a full fifth once she noticed him, and I wasn't sure which of them I pitied more: him, for the soul-crushing grief of having disappointed her; or her, for having to deal with him. Either way, the ensuing fireworks probably weren't my business.  
  
For a second, I considered walking out and leaving them to it, if only so that I could have a minute to shake the memory of my recent interrogation. Then I remembered the shape of my waiting room chairs and stayed put. She gave me a little smile of greeting before rounding on him.  
  
"What's going on here?" she asked, so breezily and lightly that I had to do a double take to make sure that there wasn't somebody else in the room.  
  
"Hey, Betts! How are you doing?" said Archie, scrambling up from the couch with enthusiasm.  
  
"I'm good, Archie!" Betty replied, with a smile that split her face in two. "How are you?"  
  
"Really great!" If he had been possessed of a tail, it would have been wagging.  
  
"And why are you here, even after I told you I had it handled?" she asked, still in the same sunny tone. I started wondering if Archie had any clue that she had slipped a scumbag the mickey last night and landed him in a hospital.  
  
"Huh?" said Archie.  
  
"Arch," she continued, tenaciously exuding an aura of graceful charm, "please leave, okay?"  
  
"No!" he insisted pugnaciously. "Betts, I'm trying to protect you."  
  
There was a brief, heart-stopping moment where I thought she might go at him like she'd gone at Clayton. I wasn't sure whether I should be thrilled that he wouldn't be wasting any more of my time, sad because he was too good-hearted for such a fate (even if he was dumber than a bag of hairs, which counted for more in my book), or worried for her emotional stability. Then she shook her shoulders a little, and the moment passed. "I appreciate that, Archie, I really do."  
  
"Then let me protect you!" he pleaded. While he spoke, his eyes darted to the ground, as if he was surveying the terrain in preparation for a dramatic drop to his knees.  
  
She put him in between her and the door in case he took a notion to shove her out of it. "Archie--" she said, stalling, and he interrupted her.  
  
"Betty, you've got to keep yourself safe," he snapped. And then, "Do you _want_ what happened to Polly to happen to you?"  
  
It was as if the air had been sucked out of the room. I was stunned into silence, unable to grasp that he had managed to say something so colossally stupid. Betty tensed all over, as if she was winding up to throw something, packing away as much energy as she could until she was practically brimming with it. Then, as if by magic, the anticipation dissipated, and her frame slumped.  
  
Somehow, Archie hadn't noticed the shift in the atmospheric pressure. "I can handle this," he insisted. "I can do it for you. I'm not afraid, Betty."  
  
If I had been more on top of things, I probably would have stepped between them right then to make sure Betty didn't deck him for that. But either I wasn't on top of things, or I subconsciously wanted her to deck him: probably the latter, since he really was asking for it.  
  
As it turned out, I needn't have worried. She surprised me again by stepping forward a little and asking, so sweetly that butter might have melted in her mouth, "If you're not afraid, then why should _I_ be?"  
  
Archie's eyebrows did a few tricks on his head as he tried to come up with an answer that wasn't a blatant insult. While his mental capacity was thus occupied, Betty took him by the arm and started steering him out. He didn't wise up to what was going on until the last few inches, at which point he dug in his heels and said something about how he wasn't doubting her, he just thought she was hurting herself going after Polly like this.  
  
"Polly's hurting more than me," she said, and a shadow fell across her face as she shut the door.  
  
She stayed there for a solid moment after it shut, leaning against the door frame and panting a little, before turning back to me in a businesslike sort of way. "Sorry it took me so long to get here. I got caught after Mass by Mrs. Doiley, who wanted me to write a column about one of her son's inventions. She just _wouldn't_ stop talking, so I ducked in to light a candle and ran out the back way. But then I got lost on the way here, because I was walking instead of driving."  
  
"What was the invention?" I asked, both to put her at ease and because I was interested.  
  
"Some sort of automated table-setter," she said, heading for the sofa with a tired smile. "Apparently, it's a collection of gears and wheels and clotheslines that lifts the utensils out of the drawer and the plates out of the cupboard, carries them across the kitchen, and dumps them on the table."  
  
"How does it know which utensils to get?"  
  
Her face lit up all at once, like a string of Christmas tree lights when you change the broken bulb. "That's exactly what I asked! She got all flustered, and said he was working out the kinks. Turns out in practice, it's an invention for breaking plates, but they've had it patented already."  
  
I lifted an eyebrow at her. "Wait, so they let you patent that stuff? Could I get a patent for something?"  
  
Betty paused in the process of settling herself down. "Depends on what you're patenting." I pretended to think, screwing up my face.  
  
"Damn. I don't think I have anything to patent--unless you count my ugly mug, of course."  
  
She regarded me solemnly. "Patent your hat. It's unique." Then she visibly collected herself and started steering the conversation on track. "Sorry about Archie, by the way. What did you want to see me about?"  
  
There were a couple of ways I could have answered that. Dead serious, professional expression, _I was hoping you could enlighten me as to why Chuck Clayton was found this morning, overdosed with a head wound, in your private room at the Blue and Gold._ Or: casual shrug of my shoulders, hint of a smirk, _nothing much, just wanted to chat about the little web of lies you've been spinning me, asking for the address of the Blue and Gold when you'd been undercover there for four weeks._ Or, possibly: innocuous smile, _lovely weather we're having, just wondering, have you been slamming any heads into tables hard enough to draw blood, recently? Even if you say you haven't, I have a witness who I badgered into telling me you did._ Or, in some zany alternate universe: _I think you might be the most thoroughly dazzling and entrancing person I have ever encountered, even though I've barely known you for twenty-four hours, because you're just so goddamn beautiful, and intelligent, and down-to-earth. You're going through hell with your head held high, and I can barely stop myself from wanting to sweep you up out of this shithole of a life we have; just wondering, how many alternate personalities are you suppressing right now?_  
  
I came back to myself, realizing that she was still waiting for me to say something. "Yeah. I just heard from a few of my sources that you got some information from Chuck Clayton about your sister's disappearance."  
  
The effect was instantaneous, and I dropped any and all hypotheses that involved her being a stone-cold manipulator. She was lit up with tells like the Empire State Building, and they weren't even standard enough tells that she could have been faking them. "I am _so_ sorry I didn't tell you about the Clayton thing. I wasn't sure the Ethel I was in contact with was the same Ethel as your source, Ethel, and I'd had the thing planned for a while. I'm working on the article today. Afraid there isn't much there about Polly, though; just that Clayton met her." She smiled apologetically, and the tells started abating, and for a moment, it might have been enough for me to believe her.  
  
"Ethel mentioned something about Polly being "the boss's girl'," I clarified.  
  
Betty's eyes widened in confusion. "I don't remember that. He wasn't lucid for very long, though. Just enough to get the confession and make it out of there." There wasn't a single tell in sight. Literally nothing, and nobody was that good of a liar, especially not a naïve girl from the suburbs of Riverdale. The suburbs produce liars, all right; but not the sort that could fly into a rage and not show any traces of embarrassment or fear or something when the incident was brought up.  
  
That was the strange thing: as far as I could tell, she really did believe that nothing had happened. Besides, if she had been trying to get away with something, she wouldn't have let Ethel see her do it. I didn't have the heart to press her any further, probably because I remembered all too well what it was like to be pressed about something you don't recall.  
  
I cleared that thought away before it could dredge up any more unpleasant things. When the thought was gone, I decided that Betty had blacked out, and didn't remember. The human brain represses traumatic moments; it's a fact of the business that I had come up against on more than one previous occasion.  
  
"So do you think that means Jason Blossom was in on his family's business, or was there another man involved?" I asked.  
  
"His family's business?" she repeated, and there was the wide-eyed look of confusion again. "You mean maple syrup?"  
  
I had to repress a snort at that one. "Wait, that's their cover story? _Maple syrup?_ "  
  
Betty looked at me like I'd implied that the earth was flat. "They own a maple syrup plant, which brings in enough money to make them the richest people in Riverdale. What do you mean, cover story?"  
  
I squinted. "So people seriously imagine that it's possible to make that much money off maple syrup? I mean, come on, what do people even put maple syrup on besides pancakes, waffles, and sometimes oatmeal?"  
  
"What do the Blossoms really do, then?" she asked.  
  
I leaned forward across the desk and whispered, "Organized crime."  
  
Her eyebrows lifted and lowered, and her mouth fell open a little. "Oh," she said simply, in a hushed undertone. And then, a moment later: "So Jason was involved? While he dated Polly?"  
  
I shrugged. "It sounds like it, from what Clayton said."  
  
Betty took a deep breath, as if she was forcibly willing herself to take all of this in stride. "Okay. My sister dated a member of a mob family. Okay." Then she puffed out something that was half-sigh, half-laugh. "This is insane."  
  
"Yeah," I agreed. It really was.  
  
A moment later, she was back, focused as ever. "The nuns came by with Polly's things yesterday. Apparently, she didn't have time to grab anything when she ran away, because everyone's things were kept in a communal closet down the hall. It's mostly clothes, but--" her expression turned to something that was guilty and rueful, but also a little satisfied, "I _may_ have stolen the stuff that wasn't, just in case there might be some sort of clue."  
  
"You stole it," I echoed hollowly.  
  
"I stole it? At least, I _think_ I did. It was kind of an out-of-body experience. I haven't really stolen many things before." She giggled a little, nervously, as she pulled a small cardboard box out of her purse.  
  
"Did they come in that, or did you bring that to keep them in?" I asked, scrutinizing the box.  
  
"They were in there. Polly's a bit of a hoarder. She likes to keep random odds and ends, anything she thinks is interesting, so she can look at them," Betty explained, emptying the box onto my desk.  
  
Random odds and ends they were, indeed. By my count, the assortment consisted of: three screws (bent out of shape), a greenish piece of sea glass, a few clock gears, two marbles, a charm bracelet with no charms on it, a couple of pressed flower petals (roses and cherry blossoms), an antique ring, a rusty key, a padlock (that the key didn't fit into), a wooden carving of an acorn, and a collection of shiny rocks in various colors.  
  
I stared hard at the jumble, but got nothing. "Does any of this mean anything to you?"  
  
Betty squinted and turned her head around to look from various angles. "Um, she always likes to have mechanical stuff whenever she's thinking hard about something. Other than that, it all seems pretty normal to me."  
  
"Sorry to drag you all the way out here," I offered, scooping the stuff back into its box.  
  
She smiled warmly. "Anything to escape the church picnic. Besides, I probably would have come by anyway to show you the collection."  
  
"Donate it to a Museum of Modern Art," I suggested, before adding devilishly, "or you could try to get a patent for it."  
  
That set both of us laughing, hard. "Is Archie causing trouble?" she continued once she got her breath. "I forgot to ask before."  
  
"I'm not sure if I'd call it trouble, but he tried to bribe me to stop investigating. I foiled the dastardly plot, and since then, he's decided he'd rather pester me with questions," I explained succinctly.  
  
Betty sighed. "We've lived next door to each other since we were kids, so he's protective of me. Before today, I'd have said he was too protective, but that was _before_ I found out that the family three streets down from me runs an organized crime syndicate."  
  
There didn't seem to be much I could say to that, but I tried. "Well, now you know."  
  
"Now I know," she agreed. "I'll keep you updated if anything else happens."  
  
"Sounds good. I'm looking forward to reading your exposé, by the way."  
  
She smiled. "Let me know what you think of it, alright? Anyway, until next time."  
  
"Until next time," I agreed warmly.  
  
When she was gone, Archie came in and wasted some more of my time by making me listen to him talk while I doodled on a piece of paper, trying to imagine what I would do if I was a young woman who had escaped from a religious insane asylum. The obvious answer was, "run away as fast and as far as I can," but the follow-up to that question was, "where?"  
  
I found the asylum on a map of Riverdale and the surrounding locales and traced possible routes that Polly could have taken when she ran away. She would have had to cut through Eversgreen Forest, as far as I could tell, but she would definitely have realized that anyone looking for her would start there, so she wouldn't have stayed for long. I considered calling Betty to ask for the addresses of places Polly would have known well, but decided against it in case her mother was home from the church picnic. Then I looked up bus routes and jotted those out on the map, marking them in banded intervals of five cents, just in case she'd managed to bring some change with her when she ran away.  
  
By the time I had exhausted the possibilities of the map, Archie was finishing up a long story involving his college football team and a dispute over the quarterback position, which was apparently resolved when he beat out the other candidate, then gave up the opportunity. It seemed like a bit of a waste to me, but it wasn't like the situation was my business, so I kept quiet and pulled out some of Polly's job applications.  
  
I had just gotten around to noticing that they were all for companies in small Canadian towns when the phone rang.  
  
"Twilight Investigations," I answered automatically. For a moment, the only other sound on the line was heavy breathing.  
  
"My room's been searched," Betty whispered, in a tone of voice that chilled me to the bone. "Everything's out of order, and when my mom cleans up, she usually puts my things back where they go. But--it's like, whoever they were, they were in a hurry. They pretty much tore open my dresser, there's clothes scattered everywhere, my mattress is crooked, and my desk is a mess. But everything's there."  
  
"Okay, find somewhere to sit and take a deep breath," I coached. "It's totally alright to freak out, but I just need to know a few things."  
  
"I'm fine," she insisted, "I swear I'm fine, I'm not panicking at all, I really am fine--"  
  
"I'm not worried about you. Are you sure nothing's missing?"  
  
"Nothing's missing. I checked everywhere," she affirmed.  
  
Archie sent me a questioning glance, which I ignored. "Okay. How many ways are there into your room?"  
  
"There's a door in the hallway, and a window. The window locks, but the hall door doesn't. I don't think the window's been forced--" Betty faltered at the end of the sentence as the implication struck her. "Wait. That means they came from _inside_ , doesn't it?"  
  
"Not necessarily," I volunteered. "Maybe they got in somewhere else in the house."  
  
"O-okay," she choked. And then, nervously, "It wasn't the Blossoms, right?"  
  
"It seems a little too pointless to be them, honestly."  
  
Betty took a deep breath. "Okay. Yeah, I see that. Maybe whoever searched was looking for the files I gave you."  
  
"Maybe," I agreed. "Listen, I'm coming over, if your parents aren't home yet."  
  
"Why?" she asked, and then got it. "You think they're coming back tonight, while I'm asleep." It wasn't a question.  
  
"I do. If they were looking for something and didn't take anything, it means they didn't find what they were looking for. I'm going to stake out your bedroom and catch them when they do. Do you have a friend you can stay over with tonight?"  
  
"I want to stay," she resolved.  
  
"Okay," I agreed. "You can stay. I doubt I could create a convincing enough replica of you with pillows, anyhow." She laughed giddily at that.  
  
"See you tonight," she added after a moment, and hung up before I could say the same.  
  
I turned to Archie. "Okay. I know you want me off the Cooper case. I get that, really. But someone searched her room while she was here, and I'm going to stake it out tonight. There's two entrances to cover and only one me, so--" (I knew there was no turning back from this, but I said it anyway, consequences be damned.) "--do you want to come?"  
  
His face lit up. "A stakeout?"  
  
I forced my eyes to stay put in their sockets and to _not_ roll derisively, no matter what Archie did. It was hard. "It's not going to be much. We sit down and try not to go to sleep, and then most likely, nothing happens and we fall asleep."  
  
"I'm in," he said. "Anything for Betty." Scrutinizing him, I decided he probably meant that. As much as he was annoying, he wasn't anywhere near malicious--just overeager, stubborn, and convinced he knew what was right for everyone. I cut myself off before I could admit that he wasn't all that bad.  
  
"Okay," I agreed, hoping I wouldn't regret it.  
  
In the car on the way over, I answered Archie's questions (no, he didn't need to hoot like an owl to tell me that the area was clear; if anyone saw him, he should ignore them unless they asked him straight out what he was doing, in which case he should make up something vague; no, he didn't need a cover identity; if someone started trying to get into Betty's room, he should tackle them, but no, it wouldn't count as a citizen's arrest because there wouldn't be a felony committed).  
  
When we got there, Betty opened the back door, outwardly at peace with the fact that someone might break into her room tonight. "Hi!" she stage-whispered, stepping outside to talk to us and shutting the door carefully. "My parents got home early, so we're going to have to be really quiet."  
  
That threw a wrench in things, of course, but there was no helping it, so I pantomimed sealing my lips and then sealed Archie's for him. From then on, it was a matter of about a half hour to get everyone situated (Archie was stationed around the back of the house, watching her window from the shadow of a nearby garden shed; I ended up tucked between two scratchy dresses in her wardrobe, with the door cracked open so I could see to the entrance on the other side of the room). Her parents were just two rooms down, which rendered conversation impractical, so Betty worked on typing up her exposé and a handful of other articles, passing each page through the door for me to see when she finished up with it. From what I could make out in the limited light available to me, she was a good writer: concise, informed, and intelligent, with a gripping style of narration that didn't come off as overtly biased. The wardrobe was about as far from roomy as it was possible to imagine, but I'd been on worse stakeouts. The plate of cookies she had smuggled upstairs was probably another contributing factor in my enjoyment.  
  
Promptly at ten, Betty put the typewriter away, lay down on the bed and covered herself up. "I feel ridiculous," she mumbled from under the blankets.  
  
"So do I," I admitted, fingering my gun in my pocket. She rolled over and tried to get some sleep while I listened, waiting for her breathing to even out. It never did.  
  
There's a perfect stillness about being one of the only people awake at any given hour, and also a sense of power: the feeling that if something happens, you will be one of the select few to witness it. After a brief interlude at eleven where Archie disregarded his orders and hooted like an owl, which required me to extricate myself from the wardrobe and open up the window so I could make a disapproving face at him, there had been no further interruption. Betty's parents had each opened the door briefly to check in on her, but had failed to notice me (for which I sent prayers of thanks to whatever saint was in charge of illicit stakeouts).  
  
The tranquility was alluring. The temptation of a stakeout is to forget that you're on one, to be lulled not into sleep, but into a semi-wakeful haze of boredom. I wasn't quite there yet, but the adrenaline had worn off within the first three hours, and I was passing the time by trying to list all the words I could think of that began with the letter X.  
  
When the flash of white appeared at the door, there was a split second where I imagined it was a dream. I sat up anyway, and the flash of white _definitely_ wasn't a dream; I heard Betty's breathing lengthen out like she was counting seconds (inhale for five seconds, exhale for ten), and I knew she had heard the intruder too, and was trying to pretend to be asleep. Softly, I disentangled myself from Betty's dresses and stepped out of the wardrobe, pushing the hinge open as quietly as I could. The figure hadn't noticed me yet; it had crept around the bed so that its back faced toward me; it was gliding across the floor to the head of the bed; (Betty's measured breathing got just a hair faster); it had reached the head of the bed, it was leaning over Betty--  
  
But it didn't go any farther than that. While it had been gliding, I had crept behind it, and as it stopped at the head of the bed, I lowered my gun to its head smoothly and clicked the safety off. It froze, startled in mid-lean. "Put your hands where I can see them," I whispered lowly, my voice coming out harsher than I had known it could sound. The figure's shoulders tensed, but it obeyed.  
  
Betty, the danger past, opened up her eyes and sat up in bed, blinking to make out the figure. Her face twisted with something-- _something_ unidentifiable that might have been longing, relief, anger, disgust, betrayal, or merely a soul-crushing sadness. She scrambled up a little farther, pulling the sheets with her, her face ashen.

" _Polly?_ " she whispered.

 


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Betty confronts Polly, Jughead is conflicted, Archie makes a hash of things, and everyone is in massive danger: in other words, just another day in Riverdale.

"Not here!" Polly hissed urgently, making a grab for Betty's arm. I shoved her away on instinct (" _protect the client at all costs_ ," my dad had always impressed upon me, the memory of his words tinged sour with the hazy smell of cigarettes), and put myself between her and Betty, with the gun where she could see it. I was pretty sure I didn't have the guts to shoot someone in front of their sister, but the gun was still good for show. If she actually attacked, I'd be in big trouble.  
  
Luckily, Polly didn't show any signs of making another lunge. She was standing against the wall, shaking a little, her eyes darting towards the window as if she was considering making a flying leap out of it. Even considering her track record with windows and flying leaps, it didn't seem like she'd have much luck, especially in light of--well, her _situation_. I kicked myself mentally for not noticing any irregularities in her stride when she first came in: some detective I was, to miss that she was knocked up.  
  
"Why not here?" Betty snarled lowly from behind me. Judging by her tone, she'd straightened out her mess of emotions enough to concentrate on anger and betrayal for the moment.  
  
Polly's eyes flickered to the window again. In person, she didn't look much like her pictures: her face was thinner and more sharply drawn, her posture was cautiously slumped, and her eyes were stiffly wide, somehow simultaneously panicked and dead. She looked as if she'd been frightened so hard and so often that she permanently froze that way. "Mom and Dad. We need to get somewhere safe."  
  
That gave me pause. Nobody said they needed to get somewhere safe if the only danger they faced was being overheard by their parents. "She's right," I decided. "Let's move the reunion someplace else." At the very least, it would mean that I wouldn't have to spend the conversation reminding them to keep the noise level down.  
  
"Are you going to put your gun down?" Polly asked, eyeing it warily. Then she turned to Betty. "Wait a second. Who is he, anyway?"  
  
I rolled my eyes. "You're the one who wants out of this house. Are you going to hold things up by asking silly questions?"  
  
"Where do you want to go?" Betty asked icily from behind me, sounding uncannily like her mother--bitter pretending to be sweet, like a Granny Smith apple.  
  
"Fred Andrews isn't home," Polly stated, without explaining how she knew. "Throw a few pebbles at Archie's window and see if he'll let us--"  
  
I beat her to it by dropping a penny out the window, onto the stone tiles at Archie's left. He jolted like somebody had shocked him and stood up, knocking the chair over. After a moment, he cupped his hands and whisper-shouted up, "I didn't fall asleep."  
  
If he was going to keep being involved, I'd have to teach him how to lie more effectively. "Stakeout's over. I need an empty room in your house with seating for three--" Betty shook her head; "two--" (shake) "no, how about seating for four, nobody listening and no questions asked." It was actually turning out to be fairly useful to have a fan hanging around.  
  
Archie squinted a little, nodded, then ticked it off on his fingers so he'd remember. "You got it. Did you shoot them?"  
  
"No."  
  
"Can I shoot them?"  
  
"No." He didn't even have a gun to shoot them with--at least, I hoped he didn't.  
  
"Who are they, and what were they looking for? Did they--"  
  
I whisper-shouted a bit too loudly, "I said no questions asked, okay?"  
  
Archie deflated a bit, but ran off. I turned back to Betty and Polly, who both looked to be on the verge of tears, albeit for entirely different reasons. If Polly hadn't been in the room, I might have told Betty that I understood what it was like to feel abandoned. Given time, I might even have tried to explain about Jellybean: about how our mother came back one day, took one look at the life we had pieced together out of disused scraps, and whisked Jelly away to some intangible "better place."  
  
As it was, all I could do, really, was to move over a little towards her side of the room. I couldn't read her very well at the moment, though I wasn't sure whether that was because of the limited light, or because even she probably wasn't sure what she was thinking. She'd drawn herself up razor straight, but her arms had crossed around her middle, like she wished she could curl up into a ball, but she had to settle for a tightly wound cylinder. (Somehow, I knew that if I were to uncurl her arms, her hands would be in fists.) Her shoulders were heaving a little, but her jaw was set. Her eyes were red-rimmed, but their expression was accusatory.  
  
Then again, I doubted anybody would have a clue what to feel when their supposedly insane sister came back from running away and broke into their bedroom in the middle of the night.  
  
Silence settled over the room: none of us had any particular inclination to speak anymore, or so it seemed. Betty was lost in trying to sort out Polly, I was lost analyzing Betty, and Polly was lost in something that involved pacing three steps forward, turning around, and pacing three steps back while biting her lip.  
  
We all jumped in unison when Archie hooted like an owl below us. "Come on down, guys!" he whispered.  
  
"Wait," said Polly, "how is Archie involved in this, anyway?"  
  
It was most definitely the wrong thing to say. "Poll," Betty muttered tersely, "you're not the one who's asking the questions here. You lost that right when you ran away." Polly recoiled a bit, and if I had any reason to trust her, I might have felt a little sorry for her. As it was, though, I trusted her as much as I trusted all the other magically-vanishing relatives of my experience (which is to say, my parents. Translation: I didn't trust her at all.)  
  
Nobody was very sure what order to go in as we snuck out. Polly didn't want to turn her back on the gun, I definitely wasn't turning my back on Polly, and Betty seemed torn between telling me to put the gun away, and telling her sister to suck it up. In the end, Betty led the way, taking periodic deep breaths in a failed effort to expel the tension from her shoulders, while Polly and I walked side by side with the gun uneasily between us. It definitely wasn't convenient. We made a bit of an interesting procession as we trudged out the back door of the Cooper house, through a gate in the fence (which wasn't white and picketed, much to my surprise, but tall and unpainted, made of some variety of wood that I hesitantly identified as cedar), and up the stairs into another house. The new house (or as Archie introduced it when we walked through the door, "The Andrews Residence") looked like someone took the basic model of the Cooper house and showed it to their supervisor, who said, " _That looks good, but make it masculine. Dark furniture, and oh, lose the dining table and put in an island instead. Men prefer to eat standing up_." Or something like that.  
  
When we got into the living room, there was another silent kerfuffle over seating arrangements: I wanted to be somewhere where I could see both Betty and Polly's faces, Polly wanted to be as close to Betty as possible, Betty wanted to be as far away from Polly as possible, and Archie wanted to be wherever he could best see the action going down. After a lengthy game of Musical Chairs (sans music, but with the addition of emotions and a gun), we gave up and ended up sitting in a rough circle: Polly, then Archie, then Betty, then me.  
  
I put down the gun on the table as a show of good faith (not that it mattered much: if anything went wrong, I'd be able to pick it up--at least, I hoped so). It clattered a little, and we all made a conscious effort not to look at it, or at each other, lest it look like we were contemplating picking it up. It was the moment two minutes before the shootout in any Western: tension building, tight close ups on eyes and hands, the stifling silence that builds, inextricably, to the gunshot.  
  
There was no way it'd come to gunshots. Just to be safe, though, I reached out to the table and clicked the safety back on. Everyone pretended they hadn't noticed, and we sat in silence for a while more. Archie was interested, but pretending not to be, like someone walking past a derailed train. Betty was still trying to calm herself down, but her face was growing more stony with every passing second, her eyes were searing holes in Archie's living room wall, and she'd practically given up on deep breathing. Polly, meanwhile, was steadily getting more worked up: every breath she took was a choked sob by now, with a bit of a sniffle and a convulsive spasm of her hands worked in. If she was acting, she was horrible at it. If she wasn't acting, then she was frightened out of her wits, and lacked any basic ability to keep her head.  
  
"Betty--" Polly choke-sobbed, reaching a hand across the table towards Betty's wrist, "I know you're mad, but just let me explain--"  
  
"Explain," Betty bit out, turning the full force of her gaze on Polly and pulling her hand off the table. "Do it."  
  
"Mom and Dad put me in a--" Polly began shakily, but Betty cut her off.  
  
"I know they put you in a home. I found you there. That's not why I'm mad, Polly." Betty bit down, hard, on her lower lip before going on. "I'm mad because you ran away, and you never tried to get in contact with me, or even tell me you were alive. I am upset, because you have no idea how much I've needed you, and you haven't been there, and I am furious that you don't trust me enough to ask for my help, Poll. And most of all, I am absolutely livid that you broke into my room, and you still haven't told me why. I spent hours, Polly, absolutely terrified that I was going to die tonight. So that's what I want explained, and don't start shifting the blame to Mom and Dad, because I know _exactly_ what they are to blame for, and this isn't part of it." Betty's shoulders didn't slump back when she finished, like they would have if the outburst had done her any good. Then again, that wasn't too surprising.  
  
"They told me you hated me," Polly protested. "They said you hadn't wanted to come and see me--"  
  
"And you _believed_ them?" Betty's face twisted with incredulity for a moment, before shifting back to betrayal and grief.  
  
Polly's sobs disappeared, replaced by a whirling tempest of fury. "Not at first, Betty," she began, sweetly, as if trying to get herself under control, "but _you_ _didn't  _ _ **come**_ ** _!_** " The sentence ended in a furious snarl. "What was I supposed to think?"  
  
"I wasn't even at home, Polly! I came as soon as I could!" Betty shot back.  
  
"Well, I needed you, and you weren't there!" Polly yelled, much too loudly for discretion.  
  
Archie and I locked eyes across the table. "Um, guys?" he asked, hesitantly. "Can you--I mean, this is kind of my house, and I _really_ don't think we want the neighbors knocking on the door to ask what's going on."  
  
They didn't reply, but they dropped back down to whispers. "I wasn't there," Betty breathed, "because I had to look for you, okay? And--and this isn't even the problem, Polly. I don't even know why we're talking about this, when we should be talking about--"  
  
She trailed off, pointedly glancing nowhere in particular. Polly leaped to the attack. "Oh, come off your high horse, Betty. Yes. I'm pregnant. The very least you could do is be happy for me."  
  
"That's not what I mean," Betty clarified, biting her lip and speaking in a measured, patient, and controlled tone, like she was talking while riding a unicycle that was balanced on a tightrope. "What were you looking for?"  
  
Polly's eyebrows furrowed together. "I wanted my ring."  
  
"What ring?" Betty coaxed.  
  
"It was in my things, from the Sisters of Quiet Mercy. It's been in the Blossom family for generations. If Penelope Blossom found out that I had it, she'd snip it off my finger," Polly recited.  
  
I combed through the assortment of magpie treasures in my head. Three screws (bent out of shape), a greenish piece of sea glass, a few clock gears, two marbles, a charm bracelet with no charms on it, a couple of pressed flower petals (roses and cherry blossoms), an _antique ring_ \--that had to be it. Betty, beside me, seemed to have come to the exact same conclusion.  
  
"Did Jason give you the ring?" Betty inquired, a little more gently.  
  
Polly's eyes brightened jubilantly. "You talked to Jason? Can I see him?"  
  
Betty shrank back. "Polly--"  
  
"No, I know what you're going to say, you just want to keep me away from him, it's not fair, it's not true--"  
  
Betty reached forwards across the table and grabbed Polly's hands, squeezing them hard between her own. "Polly, listen to me." As if by force, she seized her sister's gaze. "Polly, Jason, he--" She swallowed, once, and went on. "He--he drowned. In a boating accident. Last July. I'm so sorry, Polly. I--I thought you knew."  
  
Polly laughed and shook her head, smiling beatifically. "Betty, that's not true. Don't you see? He wanted you to believe that, but it's not true. He didn't die." She looked around to Archie and me, still beaming radiantly. "He's not dead, you see. We're running away together."  
  
"He's dead, Polly," Betty insisted.  
  
"No he isn't! I talked to him!" Polly presented this troubling revelation with the finality of a trump card, as if it would end the debate once and for all. Betty stared at Polly. Archie stared at me. And then, suddenly, the lamp in the corner of the room went out, to the sound of a gunshot.  
  
I dove under the table, pulling Betty and Polly with me. "Stay down!" I hissed, grabbing Archie by the ankle and tugging him down as well before he could try to be dumb and heroic. Betty rummaged through her purse and pulled out a match, which she lit and held up so that we could all see each other without being seen from the window.  
  
"What was that?" Archie breathed. I didn't answer, since I was trying to reach to the surface of the table and grab my gun.  
  
Polly gave a shaky gasp. "They're coming for me. We've got to go, or they'll kill all of you."  
  
Archie's face went stark white. "Oh my god," he muttered, "I'm gonna die."  
  
Betty squeezed her eyes shut and inhaled deeply, then exhaled and opened her eyes. "Who's going to kill us?" she asked, about as coolly as anyone possibly could have.  
  
"The Blossoms," Polly murmured, barely moving her lips. "They need me alive, but they don't mind killing anyone else. That was a warning shot, so that I know they're here." The match burnt too close to Betty's fingers, so she blew it out and fumbled for another.  
  
_No_. I needed to get out of this an hour ago. You didn't cross the Blossoms--you evaded them, sure, and messed with their henchmen, that was fine. But I liked my life, and I _liked_ my business, and if what happened to Ronnie's dad was any indication (let alone what happened to my dad), then I _really_ shouldn't get any more involved than I already was. As much as I liked Archie (and as much as I-- _cared_ about Betty), they could fend for themselves. They had a safety net: people who would notice if they went missing, a police department that might give a damn about what happened to them. I didn't have any of that.  
  
Betty managed to light the second match, which flickered out briefly before deciding to burn in a faltering sort of way. "Why do they need you alive?" Betty asked, a faint tinge of panic creeping in at the edge of her tone. I didn't blame her for the panic: if I had been trying to speak, I probably would have sounded a little panicked too.  
  
"My babies," Polly hissed.  
  
"Plural?" Polly just shot Betty a now-is-not-the-time look.  
  
I collected myself as well as I could. "Okay, if you're not turning yourself in, then we need to get out. If we're lucky, they didn't see our faces, but none of us should spend the night anywhere near here."  
  
"I can hotwire a car," Betty offered. The second match went out, and she didn't bother going for a third.  
  
"That just might keep us alive. Archie, you can take my car and go to my office. Polly, Betty, you guys are with me. I'll take you over to my friend Veronica. She's not officially for or against them, so you should be safe."  
  
Betty grabbed my wrist. "Polly and I shouldn't be in the same place. We need to spread out; it makes us harder to find."  
  
I decided that she was probably right. "Okay. We'll drop Polly at Ronnie's place and then go see if Ethel's home. If she isn't, we'll work from there. Archie, take my car keys and put them in your pocket, alright? Listen to me." I grabbed what I hoped were his shoulders and whirled them to face me. "I need you to go get a coat on, walk out the front door, get in my car, and drive to the office. Don't look anywhere but straight ahead of you, and act completely natural. Like you're just out for a drive. Nobody attacks people in cars, because it's too difficult to work around the rearview mirrors. When you get in, lock yourself in the inner office. Make yourself at home, but don't turn on any lights, or they can see the silhouette and shoot." I dug in my pockets and held the keys out to him. " _Go_."  
  
Archie gulped audibly, but took the keys anyway. "Alright."  
  
"Good luck," Betty whispered, squeezing his hand. He stood up, and we heard the door open and close a second later. At the sound of my car engine starting, I turned to Betty and Polly. "Go. Out the back door, and down to the other end of the block. I'll be right behind you. Stay low."  
  
Betty was off like a shot; evidently, she'd been an asset to her college track team. Polly wasn't quite as fast (understandably), and I was trying to cover her from the rear, so Betty had our stolen car purring like a kitten by the time we made it to the other end of the road. "It's Mrs. Doiley's," she whispered devilishly as I slid into the passenger side. "I'm getting my revenge."  
  
"Should we be worried that her son might have tried to modify things?" I asked, squinting at the dash to see if I could catch anything blatant.  
  
Betty shrugged. "Guess we'll find out." Before I could buckle my seatbelt, the car was off like an extremely bumpy rocket. I held on for dear life, and tried not to sound like I was actively worrying about a crash as I issued directions. Polly hadn't fared much better, but at least she'd managed to get herself strapped in before the initial acceleration. Whatever Dilton Doiley's modifications had been, they had increased the speed of the vehicle exponentially--while somehow stripping it of all but the most basic steering capabilities.  
  
We made it to Veronica's in about the time it would have taken a safe, regulation-abiding car, driven by someone not in mortal danger, to circle around the borders of a small to mid-sized suburban neighborhood. Betty parked and started helping Polly out, while I rapped on the door.  
  
It took me a few tries to get Veronica to open, and by then the adrenaline had caught up with me. "Blossoms--" I panted, then took a deep breath. "They're after Polly Cooper, can you hide her here for tonight? Possibly longer?"  
  
Veronica closed her eyes. "Why do I get the sense that you're going to get me killed one of these days?"  
  
I breathed a sigh of relief. "Good. I should probably tell you she's pregnant."  
  
"Right. I should have known. Just once, you need to take on a really nice, simple case, okay? Find missing jewelry, or something." Before I could respond, she grabbed me in a fierce hug. Her lips found my ear and whispered, "You said Blossoms. Anyone in particular?"  
  
I shook my head. "No sign of her, yet." Veronica stepped away, her features drooping slightly in disappointment, before brightening as Polly came up behind me. "Polly Cooper? I'm Veronica Lodge. Come on in. I promise you'll be safe here." She put a warm arm around Polly as the door closed behind them.  
  
When I got back to the car, Betty was waiting. "She'll take care of Polly?" she asked as I shut the passenger door.  
  
"Yeah," I responded, in a moment of stunning brilliance. She started the car and drove away, at a slightly more sedate pace. I leaned my head against the window and tried to think of something happy to focus my thoughts on. There wasn't much.  
  
We were halfway to Ethel's by the time she spoke again. "You'll stay, right?"  
  
I froze up. "I--I'm not sure." She turned to look at me, radiating hurt and betrayal. I swallowed. "You don't really get it, the Blossoms are terrifying. If they so much as look at you wrong, you're done. And I don't mean dead, I mean your entire life is in shambles."  
  
"So?" she asked accusatorily.  
  
What part of that didn't she understand? "I don't have the resources to directly oppose them. I found your sister, okay? You don't even have to pay me for it. I'm glad I did it. But you can't ask me to put myself and everyone I care about in danger. The Blossoms ruined my dad, just like they ruined Veronica's dad. You think she's always been a bartender? She was rubbing shoulders with the best there are, until Clifford Blossom raised a finger and--"  
  
"But she's fighting back!" Betty snarled. "They ruined her dad, and she's fighting back. They ruined yours, and you're just staying out of their way. What are you, a coward? Because if you are, then I don't even want you to stay. Okay? I'll drop you off at your office, and I'll go to Ethel's myself. I know the way on my own. I don't even need you at all." She veered the car into a maze of side streets before I had a chance to stop her.  
  
"I'm just not _sure_ , okay? You have a safety net--people will notice and ask questions, if something goes wrong for you. I have way more to lose here--" I protested.  
  
Betty cut me off with a glance. "Are you asking for more money or something? I thought you hated the Blossoms. You're the one who told me that they get their money from organized crime. Are you saying you're just going to sit by and let all of that happen?"  
  
I bit my tongue while I tried to think of something to say. We were almost at my office; soon she would drop me off, and I might never see her again--" _Stop_."  
  
"I'm not going to," she insisted, gritting her teeth.  
  
"No, Betty, you have to stop the car. Right now." I pointed, and she followed my gaze to my office.

The light was on in the window, and Archie was slumped over on the desk.

Betty slammed down on the brakes in the middle of the road and started opening the door, but I pulled her back in and held her gaze firmly. "No. Park the car, like everything's okay. I know you probably hate me right about now, but _please_ just do what I say. Stay here. He's probably asleep, and he just forgot about the lights. I'm sure it's okay, but--if--on the offchance that I yell for you to drive, _drive_ , and don't come back for anything. Do you understand?"  
  
"I understand," she said, soberly, parking the car neatly off to the side of the road. I opened the door and looked back at her, smiling weakly. She grabbed at my arm. "Promise you'll be careful, Jughead."  
  
"I promise," I whispered, closing my eyes to preserve the moment forever. Her thumb brushed my cheek briefly, then retreated.  
  
I got out of the car, closed the door and strode up the sidewalk without looking back, trying to seem like I wasn't in a hurry. For all my skill at reading other people, I had never been very good at acting myself, and my inexperience was probably about to get me killed.  
  
The outside door was locked, which could have been a good sign or a bad one. The instant I was inside, I dropped all pretense and rushed to the inner room. If they could see me at this point, then they were in the building (or in a sniper position), and they were waiting for me, so it really wouldn't matter how hurried I seemed.  
  
Archie was in my chair, head down on the desk. I made it across the room to him and felt his pulse: weak, but steady. Pulling his head off the desk, I took a look. There wasn't any bump that I could see, and his pupils looked fairly normal, despite being unresponsive. It was then that I noticed the red smear around his mouth. With a sickening feeling lowering in my stomach, I swiped my thumb around the stain and smelled it.  
  
Maple syrup.  
  
I dropped Archie and made a break for the window, jamming it open as quickly as I could. "Drive!" I yelled hoarsely. "Go! Drive!" But the angle wasn't right, and there wasn't enough light, so I couldn't see whether Betty left or not. For a brief moment, I considered trying to get out the window myself, but I gave it up. Archie didn't deserve any of this, and the very least I could do was try to get him out of the mess I'd gotten him into.  
  
"Well, well, _well_ ," a feminine voice drawled, as a sickly sweet maple odor pervaded the room. I froze stock still, as a hand with red-painted nails snaked forward and stole a cigarette from my breast pocket. "If it isn't Jones Junior Junior." There was a pause as she fiddled with her lighter. "I'd say, 'Look what the cat dragged in'," she continued, puffing out a ring of smoke, "but honestly--my cat has _much_ better taste."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, that feminine voice is exactly who you think it is. As always, let me know what you think!
> 
> (Also, does anyone know what the ship name is for FP and Alice? I am asking for reasons that have _absolutely nothing_ to do with considering writing a Riverdale prequel fic...*laughs evilly*)


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cheryl is unleashed upon the narrative, with disastrous consequences.

I decided it wasn't worthwhile to delay turning around. "Cheryl. Are you here to kill me?"  
  
Cheryl Blossom rolled her eyes a little. "Honestly, Jones, your ego is severely overinflated. Any half-baked sideshow freak with a gun can kill someone, so why would I waste my time offing you?" She punctuated the sentence with another puff, before deciding that the cigarette wasn't worth her time either and snuffing it out on my desk.  
  
I tried to find somewhere to look that wasn't at her eyes or the mother-of-pearl-handled pistol she had leveled at me, and ended up with my gaze fixed on her hat. It was a nice hat, incidentally: small and black, perched off to the side of her head, with a tulle netting veil and a little bundle of red roses that matched the lipstick clumsily smudged around her face. "So what does the Blossom family want with Twilight Investigations? If it's my waiting room chairs, just take them. If it's Archie, that's gonna be a bit of a tougher bargain."  
  
"Sit," she ordered, with a little jerk of the pistol towards my chair. When I hesitated, since there was an unconscious body in the chair, and I didn't fancy the idea of sitting on Archie, she leaned forward and shoved him off. "Honestly, I swear I do everything myself these days," she muttered, half under her breath and half to me.  
  
I took the seat and waited for her to sit as well, but she kept on standing, the gun leveled in a two-handed grip directly at the center of my forehead. I affected nonchalance. "You know, it isn't precisely polite for me to be sitting while a lady stands--"  
  
Cheryl cut me off. "Really, Jones? It isn't polite for me to be holding a gun at you, but I'm doing it anyway. Now, on to business. I have a case for you."  
  
"Won't take it."  
  
She stepped back around the desk, delicately nudging Archie's outstretched hand to the side with the heel of her shoe. "Don't care. It pays well, anyway, so hear me out." Before I could refuse again, she continued. "I need you to find someone. A woman, blonde, five six or so, I'm not sure on the statistics. Heavily pregnant, answers to name of Polly Cooper."  
  
I pretended to consider, while attempting to maneuver my right hand down to my coat pocket. "Can you let me think about it?"  
  
"Sure," Cheryl drawled, with a menacingly charismatic grin. "While you're thinking, would you mind noting the fact that my trigger finger is faster than your quick-draw skills? I'd appreciate it if you were to take the gun from your right-hand coat pocket, put it on the ground and kick it away from you.”  
  
I estimated the distance between us, and decided she'd probably plug me before I could get to her gun. With an exaggerated sigh, I complied. "Seriously, though, I'm honored you're taking so many precautions. Does this mean you're afraid of me?"  
  
"No, it means I prefer not to get shot while discussing business," she responded icily. "Speaking of--"  
  
I cut in before she could go back to Polly. My best chance was to stall her until Archie woke up, which would even things out. Two against Cheryl wasn't anywhere close to fair odds, but it was significantly better than one against Cheryl. "Are you still sore from the last time you got shot discussing business, then? Because Veronica Lodge sends her regards, and she wants anyone who sees you to let you know she's out for your head on a platter this time around."  
  
Cheryl laughed, throwing back her head and showing her teeth without letting the gun waver a millimeter. When she finished up, she curved her lips into a smirk and leaned so far over the desk that the tip of her pistol came to rest on my forehead. "Tell _dear_ Ronnie," she whispered, her breath smelling not of maple, but of cherries, "that her head's such a work of art, I've got a space saved on my wall for it, right between my Fabergé egg collection and my favorite Matisse."  
  
"Copies?" I asked, even though I already knew the answer.  
  
"You wish," she scoffed. "Anyway, if you won't take on the Cooper case, maybe you'll take on another. A very dear friend of my family's was brutally attacked the other night by a couple of…shall we say, call girls _._ It shouldn't be too hard to track down the guilty parties, since one of them rather _foolishly_ gave her real name when she paid for the room. Ethel Muggs, was it? Is she a friend of yours?"  
  
I stared straight ahead and willed myself not to give out tells. "I'm not going to take any case you offer, Cheryl. Your family chews people up and spits them out, and I don't want to get involved."  
  
She swung herself up onto the desk and perched there, swinging her legs a little. "Yes, but who else is going to get involved if you don't? Say poor Ethel gets recognized by my associate, and say that by some clerical error, her bail is too high for anyone to pay but my father. You do know he's a noted philanthropist, right?"  
  
"I don't know anything about Polly Cooper," I insisted. The easiest way to lie was to say one thing and mean another: I didn't know anything about Polly Cooper's early life, or her current state of mental health (though I wouldn't classify either as very good).  
  
One of Cheryl's precisely contoured eyebrows began a laborious ascent towards her hairline. "Nobody's saying you do. I'm just asking you to follow in your father's footsteps and help my family out a little--"  
  
"No," I said politely. "You can kill me if you like, but if that veil is meant to function as identity concealment, it's not working. So there's a good chance witnesses could place you in the area."  
  
"That's not the point of the veil. I'm in mourning, and my face is too good to hide, anyway," Cheryl retorted flatly. "If your sister died, you'd go into mourning, I assume?"  
  
I gritted my teeth. "My sister's well out of this. Your brother was knee deep in your family's muck, Cheryl, so don't even pretend he didn't deserve what was coming to him."  
  
Cheryl recoiled a little, as if she had been slapped. Her face roiled in indignation and rage, before settling into a placid mask that rivalled Betty's best. "That's beside the point," she noted, smiling agreeably. "The point is that your dad used to do business with us, as you know. He ended up on the wrong side of my family, and we ruined him. If we work with him again, we might oh-so-inadvertently ruin him again. Even worse than we did before." She paused, wetting the inside of her lips with her tongue. "We _might_ , say, have incriminating evidence linking him to the disappearance of Hermione Lodge several years ago."  
  
I shut my eyes and tried not to picture Veronica as I had first met her, terrified and alone, with a spark of defiance glinting in her eyes.  
  
Cheryl's voice droned on, inexorable as the strokes of a clock pendulum. "That's the thing. If we don't do business with you, we might do business elsewhere, and who knows what will happen if 'elsewhere' ends up being with Daddy dearest?"  
  
"I haven't seen my father in years," I bluffed, forcing my breaths to keep coming regularly.  
  
Cheryl's voice came closer. "Yes, but you're good at keeping in touch, aren't you? You still call your sis--"  
  
"I don't understand," I hedged frantically, snapping my eyes open. "This isn't your usual style, Blossom. You're more of the point-and-kill type, and if you really wanted Polly Cooper's babies, we'd be having a different conversation right now. Which means it isn't you that wants the babies, it's your parents, and they've sent you out to do their dirty work. I'll skip a few steps in the deduction, since you look impatient and you've got a gun, but here's the conclusion: your parents are trying to marry you off, aren't they?"  
  
Cheryl wasn't nearly impressed enough for me to start feeling hopeful about my chances. "So what if they are? You think I'm about to start feeling sympathy for you, because we're both stuck between a rock and a hard place?"  
  
"No," I admitted frankly, "but I don't think you like pretending to be your parents' pawn so your relatives don't scent blood. You don't like anything about this situation, and it's showing. Your threats are blunt, Cheryl. They're ham-fisted, and--"  
  
She silenced me by shoving my jaw closed with the gun, and the pure fury in her eyes made it extremely clear that I had miscalculated. "The funny thing about blunt threats," she hissed, "is that they're effective. If you want to _crush_ something, you can't do it with a needle. So let me make something crystal clear: the mere fact that my family is comprised of demons from the pits of hell doesn't mean that I can't rain down utter destruction on every single person you care about. Nobody really cares what happens to a streetwalker or a bartender, Jones. Some things just _happen_. For instance, alcoholics are prone to car crashes, and teenage girls have an alarming tendency to vanish and turn up with their skulls crushed in. Especially teenage girls named Forsythia, who live in a subpar Toledo apartment with their mother and their grandparents and a big shaggy white dog--"  
  
"Your brother's not dead," a voice from the doorway enunciated clearly. My lungs suddenly remembered how to breathe.  
  
For an unguarded instant, naked longing gripped Cheryl's face like a vise. Then she whirled to face the doorway. "Who's there?" she asked. "Stand where I can see you, and don't try anything dumb."  
  
I had never been happier to see Betty Cooper, even though she was definitely supposed to have driven far, far away the instant I yelled at her to. Cheryl had stepped a little to the side, just enough that I could make out Betty as she stepped through the doorway, breathing hard and holding a tire iron above her head like a baseball bat. "I'm Betty Cooper. Cheryl Blossom, I presume?" With a sudden thudding feeling in my stomach, I realized that I had absolutely no idea how long Betty had been listening in, or just how much she had heard about my family. Then again, people learning the sordid details of my personal history was undeniably the least of my troubles at the moment.  
  
"How do you know that Jason's not dead?" Cheryl inquired suspiciously, keeping the gun on me.  
  
Betty swallowed and stepped forward a little. "Because my sister spoke to him." For a moment, I wasn't sure whether Betty actually believed Polly, or whether she was bluffing. But there was an infinitesimal waver in her chin as she shoved it a fraction higher: she was bluffing, and we were going to have to hope with all our might and main that Cheryl didn't notice.  
  
Cheryl slid off the desk. "So then, why am I still talking to you?" she queried languidly, gliding across the room until she stood face to face with Betty. I took the opportunity to scoot the chair towards the side of the desk, which would give me a much easier escape route if I needed one. I briefly considered making a run for it, but then Archie groaned from the floor and got Cheryl looking our way again for a second before she turned back to her more interesting prey.  
  
"Because my sister doesn't want to talk to you," Betty returned, meeting Cheryl's eyes steadily.  
  
There was a blur of motion that I didn't quite catch, and then Betty's back was pressed up against the wall, Cheryl's left hand was twisting Betty's arm up at an impossible angle, and her gun hand had hit Betty's wrist hard enough that the tire iron went clattering out of reach. Archie gave another wheezing groan and twitched a little, while we all studiously ignored him. "Let me revise that question," Cheryl snarled, yanking Betty's head back by the hair and nudging the gun up against her skull all at once. "Where is your _darling_ sister, and how much are you going to let me _hurt_ you before I find out?"  
  
Pain flickered across Betty's face, then set itself into a grim mask and stayed put. She made a noise that was half-laugh half-cough and went on too long, even though Cheryl shook her shoulders a little to shut her up. "What makes you think," Betty said slowly, "that you can get me to give up my sister? You can kill everyone in this room, slowly and painfully, one by one, and I won't give you a syllable," she vowed quietly. "You know I'm telling the truth."  
  
For an excruciatingly long second, they hung there, gazes locked in a silent duel. I started shifting my weight off the chair and onto my feet in preparation to make a last-ditch scramble for my gun. It was about five feet away, lying just on the other side of Archie's outstretched arm, and I would have grabbed it already if Cheryl hadn't been training the gun on Betty.  
  
Cheryl must have seen something noteworthy in Betty's eyes, because she stepped back with a little nod. "I wouldn't give up Jason, either," she said, meeting Betty's eyes again with a hint of defiant respect. "So, let's see if we can come to an agreement."  
  
"Alright," Betty acquiesced, her eyes flickering between me and Archie, who was slowly rolling over while continuing to moan as if he had a toothache.  
  
Cheryl sauntered over to the sofa and sat, gesturing Betty to the seat next to her with the gun. When they got themselves situated, Cheryl reached for Betty's hand and squeezed it as if they were old friends. The effect was slightly undercut, though, by the fact that Cheryl was still pressing the gun into Betty's side, albeit a little more discreetly. "I miss my brother more than anything in the world," Cheryl murmured.  
  
"I don't doubt that at all," Betty agreed soothingly. "I just want my sister and her children to be okay."  
  
Cheryl's nostrils flared a little. "Okay? As Blossoms, your sister's children would want for nothing!"  
  
Betty's face clouded over. "If Polly is running away from your family, I'm sure she has good reason to, and I'm going to stand by her. What are you offering?"  
  
Cheryl's grip on Betty's hand tightened. "I write a sealed letter to Jason. You deliver it to him and send me his response. If I receive that response by the end of the month, then my family leaves your sister alone."  
  
"And if not?" Betty asked warily.  
  
Cheryl laughed merrily. "Well, Jason's alive, isn't he? So it _obviously_ won't come to that."  
  
Betty's eyes flickered over to me apologetically. "Alright. I accept," she declared.  
  
"Good!" Cheryl pronounced, sounding very much as if Betty was a dog who had just managed to roll over on command. "Now, I need a pen, paper, and an envelope." Without waiting for an invitation, she plucked the required articles off the desk and retreated back to the sofa.  
  
"Stick em' up!" yelled Archie from the floor, surprising everyone. In all his laborious rolling and groaning, he had somehow managed to secure my gun, and he was pointing it at Cheryl with a hand that trembled only slightly.  
  
The heel of Cheryl's boot shot out, catching Archie neatly between the legs as he struggled to his feet. He went down, grunting a word that would have probably induced his father to wash his mouth out with soap. The gun sailed neatly across the room in a low, curving arc, and my luck was in, for once: I caught it a few inches above the floor, the tips of my fingers just barely finding purchase on its handle.  
  
Cheryl took one look at me and went back to her letter. "There's not a lot of point in shooting me," she observed airily. "We already have an agreement." With a flourish, she signed her name at the bottom of the letter, then folded it closed and dug in her purse.  
  
"What are you looking for?" Betty asked, with barely concealed interest.  
  
Cheryl laughed sweetly. "Calm down, Cooper. I'm not grabbing another gun or anything; your friend has me figuratively and literally covered. I just want a candle."  
  
Betty looked as if she wanted to ask what Cheryl could possibly want a candle for, but she sat back on the couch for the moment, content to watch. Her eyes found mine, with a wordless question: _did she hurt you?_  
  
I shook my head very slightly, as Cheryl came back up from the purse with a small red taper clutched triumphantly in her hand. "Got it!" she crowed, igniting the candle with a flick of her lighter. Three thick blobs of hot red wax dropped slowly onto the envelope. The obvious thing to note would be that it resembled blood, but it didn't, not really. Blood, even when it's congealed, looks absolutely nothing like red candle wax, and anyone who insists otherwise is either misguided or having a laugh at your expense.  
  
Delicately, Cheryl extracted a ring from her index finger. It glinted gold in the candlelight as she held it up while the wax started setting on the envelope, and our eyes followed it steadily down as it stamped into the seal with a ponderous squelch. Puffing daintily, Cheryl blew out the candle and picked the letter up, offering it to Betty.  
  
Betty moved to take it, but Cheryl's red fingernails curled around her wrist. "Ah-ah- _ah!_ Not yet. There's just one more thing I need."  
  
"We're the ones with the gun trained on you," Archie asserted, hauling himself up by bracing his arms on the upholstered stool.  
  
Cheryl snorted derisively. "You're the one who's spent most of this conversation on the floor, so I'd shut your gorgeous mouth. What I want is very simple, Betty. It's just reassurance."  
  
"Reassurance?" Betty asked, her eyebrows drawing together quizzically. "What do you mean?"  
  
A single red-enameled finger traced down and around the line of Betty's jaw. "It's like this, Betty. You have my brother, right now. If, by an unfortunate misunderstanding, I break the terms of our agreement, it would be almost criminally easy for you to take out your dissatisfaction on Jason. But I don't have that luxury, Betty. So, I'm asking you politely." Her eyes scanned the room and locked on mine, smirking coldly. "What do you think goes better with my outfit? Red…or black?"  
  
Betty's eyes zigzagged between Archie and me frantically. "Cheryl, I think you'd better quit while you're ahead," she suggested.  
  
Cheryl's shoulders shrugged a fraction as she stood up. "Oh, honey, I'm not afraid of you, though it's sweet that you think I am. Anyway, ta-ta; nice to meet you all. Archie, I might get in touch, or I might not, depending on the demand schedule for brainless escorts in this year's social scene." In a whirl of black fabric and maple smell, she was gone before any of us could manage a response.  
  
The only sound was the ticking of the clock, as we all stared at the letter in Betty's hands.  
  
"I don't suppose we could steam it open and see what's inside?" Archie asked. "Not that I care, I mean."  
  
I put the gun back in my pocket with a sigh of relief before turning to Betty. "Okay. So now we have to find Jason, in the next two weeks, or an unspecified assortment of unspeakably horrible things are going to happen to us all. So, it all comes down to this: you know your sister, Betty. Was she telling the truth?"  
  
There was anguish in her eyes, along with a world-weariness that might have been disillusionment, but was probably just the fact that none of us had slept for well over twenty-four hours. "I don't know," she admitted softly.  
  
"You said you know Polly better than anyone," I pressed. "What do you think? Just trust your instincts on this."  
  
But Betty shook her head, her mouth setting in a thin line. "I have no clue," she said, sorrowfully. "Even if Polly is right, I don't think she's going to tell us where he is, especially not if she knows the information's going to Cheryl."  
  
Archie pulled himself up onto the couch next to her. "Betty, it's okay," he whispered. "You're going to be fine. I'm going to help, and Jughead's going to help, and his friends are going to help."  
  
"Thanks, Archie," Betty whispered, threading her hand through his. It was such an innocent gesture, so full of wordless need, and I couldn't even find it in myself to get annoyed.  
  
"We should go," I offered. "We can all go to Veronica's place for now and get some sleep. It's closer than your neighborhood, and that way we can check on Polly and see how she's settling in."  
  
Betty looked up. "Jughead, you don't have to keep on doing this. It's not right. You didn't ask to get caught up in this."  
  
"I'm not quitting."

A slow smile dawned on Betty's face. “Thank you.”  
  
We piled into the cars in silence: Archie in his car, me in mine, and Betty in Mrs. Doiley's, which she was slowly becoming fond of, despite (or perhaps because of) its modifications. The journey was quick and uneventful, except for the fact that Archie was a spectacularly horrible driver, while Betty still hadn't quite gotten control of her stolen vehicle's more eccentric steering tendencies.  
  
Polly was waiting for us on the doorstep, clutching a thick robe around herself, and—  
  
Something was definitely wrong, even though I wasn't close enough to make out Polly’s face or the words she was shouting, because the instant Betty pulled up in the driveway, she rocketed out of the car and up the driveway, and grabbed Polly tightly in the sort of hug one gives to someone who has just survived a near-death experience.  
  
My heart gave a loud, panicked hammer, then stuttered to a halt. I contorted my head, trying to see past Polly into the doorway, straining for any glimpse of Ronnie. She was okay, of course. I was panicking, which was completely understandable. I was just taking the history between Ronnie and Cheryl and letting it influence my perceptions: Ronnie was okay, she was alright.  
  
My legs moved out of the car, jerkily. Polly was sobbing, but the sound was more distant than it should have been; I made out the words, " _Veronica_ ," and " _gone_ " and " _bedroom trashed...some sort of fight_ " and " _I was in the bath the whole time_ ", and then something was being shoved into my hands. I blinked twice, but the world looked like it was in a kaleidoscope, twirling round and round, refocusing and adjusting. I blinked again and bit down on my tongue, because I didn't do tears, not when people left, and _definitely_ not when they were kidnapped.  
  
Dimly, I became aware of a sharp pain in my thumb, and I lifted it up to my eyes so I could see what was wrong with it. There was a ragged hole pierced in my skin, bleeding little drops, one by one, and my hand was clutching a red rose that almost matched the color (but not quite). My fingers lost their grip, and the rose fell, its petals scattering, and staining the ground red ( _but they won't,_ my sane, conscious mind insisted, _they'll just get swept away, go drink some water and get some rest, you're going to scare everyone._ )  
  
My hands still weren't empty, though, and so I brought my other hand up close to my face and unfurled the expensive, white paper that smelled of maple, smudging the corners rusty red with my thumb.  
  
_Dear Mr. Jones,_  
  
Y _our associate misconstrued my reference to "reassurance" as referring to yourself and Mr. Andrews. This was, most definitely, not my intention. Miss Cooper already has sufficient motivation to continue her investigations into my brother's whereabouts; you, however, do not. As you may recall, I offered you a choice between Miss Lodge and Miss Muggs, who I believe is a redhead. You elected not to choose, and so I merely selected the option that was the most geographically convenient. Rest assured that Miss Lodge is being treated well, just as she was during her last extended stay at Thornhill. If you bring in the authorities, they will see no crime in two young women of mutual acquaintance enjoying each other's company. I apologize that your involvement as a professional is necessitated; I would prefer to pursue my brother myself, thus rendering this tawdry song-and-dance unnecessary, if it were not for the fact that I believe Jason will be more receptive to third-party requests for his return._  
  
_Best regards_ ,  
  
_C. Blossom_  
  
_P.S. Consider this course of action as having been undertaken for your own good. The only thing women find more attractive than a Byronic hero is a Byronic hero in distress. You'll thank me later_.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A horribly long chapter in which Jughead investigates Jason's disappearance, argues with a number of people, and inhales pillow down.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi guys! Sorry for the long wait! (May is AP month, and Economics is kicking my butt. Long story short, my class is trying to learn two year's worth of Econ in one year's time, in a course completely written and taught by a history teacher with no economic knowledge who has never taught the course before. It's not going well, and so now I'm pretty much cramming...or not, considering that I'm still writing fanfic. Oh well...)
> 
> The other reason that this chapter is delayed is that it weighs in at a hefty 7.5 K words or so. I wanted to break it up into two, but there wasn't really a good place, so you guys got this megachapter instead!

I was in shock, I noted absently.  
  
It was just about the only thought that I could manage. I was bone-deep tired, the sort of tired that can only really come when you stay up too late on a stakeout, get shot at, run for your life, drive away in a deathtrap, and then get threatened by an unstable assassin with a gun.  
  
Somewhere along the line, I had made it across the threshold and onto Veronica's couch. Somebody had slipped something between my fingers; it was warm, maybe too warm, possibly scalding, but I didn't care enough to set it down. There was something I had to do: no, a number of things. The thing--no, _things_ \--I had to do were in some way connected to the hazy murmurs all around me, voices that babbled lowly and off-key. My fingers had a sluggish, prickling, pins-and-needles feeling, as if I'd sat on them for too long or something, even though obviously that wasn't what had happened. I hadn't been sitting on them; they were still holding the too-warm-maybe-scalding thing, whatever it was. I was in shock; that was why my fingers felt so wrong.  
  
The question, though, was why I was in shock. That was something I could use: real, and concrete. A question. After all, I answered questions for a living; surely I could manage to figure out why I was in shock.  
  
Ever so gradually, I walked myself back through my memory, the way a dancer might lower themselves carefully into a stretch after falling. I had gotten onto this couch by stumbling through the door (there was a word that described how I felt, both physically and mentally, but I couldn't quite grasp it: it was something like _dull_ but not quite, and it reminded me for some reason of the word _aesthetic_.). I had gotten to the door by walking up the sidewalk. Something had happened in between.  
  
The scalding thing in my hand slipped an inch further down in my lax grip, and the motion sent a searing jolt of pain through my injured thumb. The sudden return of sensation kickstarted reality again for me, and I knew, as though I had never forgotten, that the word I was looking for was _numb_ (which was what you felt like when you were under _anesthetic_ , which really shouldn't sound as much like _aesthetic_ as it did, since they meant two completely different things), that the scalding thing in my hand was a mug of hot chocolate that somebody had handed to me a moment ago, that the pain in my thumb was from a puncture wound, and that the reason I was in shock was that one of my two best friends in the entire world had been abducted to be used as leverage against me.  
  
"Where's Polly?" I asked, my voice coming out dead, too low and just _wrong_.  
  
Betty straightened up across the room. "I told her to get some sleep. She's in worse shock than you. We can find Jason, but it needs to wait until morning."  
  
There was something you had to do, if a person disappeared. We couldn't notify the police, but there was something else--  
  
"We should investigate the scene of the crime," Archie announced from across the room, and I kicked myself mentally for letting him beat me to it.  
  
Betty firmed up her mouth. "Archie, I can hardly hold my head up, and Jughead doesn't look much better. We need to get to somewhere safe; somewhere we know the Blossoms won't come after us."  
  
"But if we leave, then the scene of the crime might get tampered with!" Archie retorted hotly. "We need to gather evidence, so that we can launch a rescue mission!"  
  
I leaned my head back against the couch and decided to let them go at it. It didn't really matter, either way.  
  
"All of our lives are in danger!" Betty hissed. "And we're dead on our feet!" Veronica's couch was actually very comfy, I decided. If we got her back safely, I was definitely going to crash there more often.  
  
"We can't lose the trail!" Archie yelped. "The scent might vanish! We need to cross-examine the witnesses, stat!" After a moment, he added, "Val might let us stay at her place if we ask nicely."  
  
Betty made a noise in her throat that sounded like an agonized scream's politer cousin. "Archie," she explained, with an air of patient suffering, "we are not going to stay with your ex while we're being hunted by the maple syrup mafia."  
  
"Do you have a better idea?" he inquired.  
  
"How about literally anyone else?" Betty offered, with the beaten-down politeness of a particularly put-upon saint.  
  
"Well, I don't know!" Archie yelled. "You're not the one who's going to have to explain the bullet hole in the window to my dad--"  
  
"Oh, just throw a football through it or something, he'll never know the difference," Betty suggested exasperatedly.  
  
With a Herculean effort, I raised my head from the couch. "Okay. Cheryl needs her brother back and we're supposedly finding him, which means that as of right now, nobody is actively trying to kill us. I'm going to go look at the bedroom and see if there's anything of significance, even though I honestly doubt there will be. In the meantime, Betty, can you please wake up your sister? We need to know where Jason is, and she's the only person who can tell us."  
  
Betty set her lips stubbornly. "Jughead, I have to do what's best for my sister, and waking her up for an interrogation is definitely not what's best for her."  
  
I was not in the mood for this. "Betty, Veronica is gone, so forgive me if coddling your sister isn't my top priority. At the very least, can someone go see if she's still awake?"  
  
Betty shot me a glare, but stalked off anyway, leaving me fully aware that I was being an insensitive jerk. If she wasn't afraid of waking Polly, she probably would have slammed the door, but she settled for closing it with a deliberate, yet barely audible click. "What can I do to help?" Archie asked, staring after her bemusedly.  
  
I racked my brain. "Um, I need you to guard the perimeter. Stay inside, but keep an eye on the windows and shout if you see anyone preparing to attack."  
  
Archie's eyebrows squeezed together in perplexity. "But I thought we weren't in any danger!"  
  
Damn. I _had_ said that, hadn't I? A glance at the guest bedroom door revealed that Betty was still in there with Polly, so with a mental apology to her, I started in on the only excuse that presented itself. "I just said that to stop Miss Cooper from worrying; you know the way women get. We're _definitely_ still in danger."  
  
"I understand," said Archie soberly. After a moment, he added, "I'll hold them off; you can count on me. No matter what. Just--if I die, can you tell my girlfriend? Well, there might be a few people answering to that title, actually. So just tell my dad, and tell him to tell all my old girlfriends."  
  
"You're not going to die. If they look like they're going to attack, sound the alarm and retreat. We don't have the manpower to hold off a full frontal assault," I improvised, trying to recall the way dialogue sounded in war movies. "You're our sentry. Do it right, which means don't get your head blown off."  
  
"Noted. Can I have your gun, anyway?" Archie inquired.  
  
"Not until you learn how to shoot it without getting disarmed."  
  
"Can you teach me?" he begged.  
  
"Does it look like we have the time for a shooting lesson right now?" I queried testily.  
  
Archie wilted a little, but headed for the window. There weren't any more ways I could come up with to put off the inevitable, so I pulled myself up off the couch and stalked off in the direction of the bedroom.  
  
Veronica was going to be okay, I reminded myself. Cheryl wasn't going to hurt her, not unless we failed to keep up our end of the deal. This was just another crime scene, one I'd walked onto hundreds of times. It didn't matter that Veronica was my friend; it didn't matter that she had been kidnapped because I had gotten in way too deep (though, knowing Cheryl, there had definitely been plenty of other reasons for her to kidnap Veronica). Wallowing in grief and guilt wasn't helping Veronica, so I was going to snap out of it and examine the bedroom. I was being a sentimental fool: even my dad would have told me so, though he would have probably preferred the words "fucking idiot".  
  
I opened the door on an exhale, before my gut could think of any more ways to feel unsettled and nervous.  
  
My first thought, idiotic as it was, was that it must have snowed overnight. The entire room was blanketed in a soft, fluffy layer of white. It had settled on to the floor, the bed, the overturned dresser, and even the tops of the hangers in the closet. I bent down for a closer look and nearly inhaled it: pillow down. A further search revealed a jimmied window, along with the slashed carcasses of no less than seven of Veronica's best pillows. _Cheryl came in through the window with a knife. She attacked, and Ronnie blocked the strike with the nearest thing at hand: a pillow. The knife was short enough that Cheryl couldn't get to Ronnie through the pillow, so she tore it out and the down flew everywhere. The ceiling fan might have been on, which would have helped spread it out. Cheryl attacked again, and Ronnie blocked again, or maybe Ronnie managed to grab the knife, and Cheryl blocked it: at any rate, they ran out of pillows--what then? Veronica didn't scream, or Polly would have noticed, so she clearly thought she could handle it (or that Polly wouldn't be any help), and she definitely wasn't in pain._  
  
I spun around the room: no visible signs of blood, so the knife had been mostly for show. The curtain, which was fairly devoid of down, had been pulled off of its rod and hacked nearly to pieces: they had run out of pillows, and so when whoever had the knife (probably Cheryl, by then) lunged again, the other person (Veronica, perhaps standing on the bed to reach high enough) pulled the rod off of its mounting and tangled her attacker in the curtain, buying herself enough time to think of a next move.  
  
Visibility would have been low, by then, so Veronica would have gone for something familiar, something easy. I pulled out her sock drawer to find that the gun she kept there was missing. She'd grabbed the gun and levelled it at Cheryl while Cheryl was still stuck in the curtain, and in any other fight, that would have been the end. But Cheryl had known Veronica had a gun, and she'd had a gun, too, so she would have drawn it under the curtain.

When Cheryl came out from under the curtain, it would have been a stalemate. Mutually assured destruction. But somehow, mutually assured destruction had turned into a kidnapping, complete with ransom note. How?  
  
Veronica's nightstand, which was also fairly down-free, had been relocated from the head of the bed to the exact middle of the left side. On its surface, drying faintly, was a damp ring. They had sat down for drinks, and Cheryl had somehow managed to drug Veronica. She'd taken the bottle with her when she left, so the specifics were going to stay hazy.  
  
There wasn't anything else for me to find, and it wasn't as if investigating the scene was proving helpful. We already knew the identity of the kidnapper; we already knew where Veronica had been taken. Filling in the "how" was a pointless exercise. I shut the door softly behind me, and stepped out into the hallway, where I almost immediately collided with Betty.  
  
"Polly's awake," she explained, stepping back to a safe distance, "so she's just going to take a few minutes to get dressed and then we can talk. Listen, should I call the police about this?"  
  
I shook my head. "No. It's not like they can do anything to help. I'll call Ethel and ask her to forge a note to Veronica's boss, say she's under the weather or something. In the meantime, I think we'd better clean all this up."  
  
She nodded resolutely and brushed past me in search of the kitchen cabinets. "I'll see if I can find a broom and dustpan," she called over her shoulder. I shuffled back into the room and found a relatively down-free spot on the bed.  
  
What we needed was a plan--or even a list of objectives, ordered chronologically. But all I could come up with was "talk to Polly", "clean up crime scene", and much further down the line, "save Veronica". Oh, and probably "find Jason", if it turned out that he was alive after all. The trouble about unraveling this case was that every single thread I tugged on turned into a whole new tangle.  
  
Betty came back with cleaning implements and a bag for the debris. Wordlessly, I took the dustpan from her and knelt down to start scraping at the down on the floor. We worked in silence for some time.  
  
"You knew her well?" Betty asked, seemingly out of the blue.  
  
"Since we were fourteen," I replied.  
  
Betty absorbed this for a moment. "She seemed like a good person."  
  
I closed my eyes, trying to imagine a world where it was possible to reduce the multitudinous complexities, contradictions and quirks of Veronica Lodge into the single word _good_. "You know, back when I met her, she had money. I'm talking piles here. I mean, her family had pretty much run out of creative things to do with it by that point. I wouldn't even be surprised if they had a pool of molten gold in their backyard, just for show." I swallowed around the lump in my throat and continued. "Anyway, she wasn't all that nice to me, back then. Her dad hired mine for some job, and so we got thrown together whenever they had to meet up. I thought she was a spoiled little rich girl, so I was obnoxious to her every chance I could get, and she didn't want anything to do with me, probably because I was a pretentious little weirdo."  
  
"What changed?" Betty asked, her eyes dipping down to meet mine.  
  
I swallowed. "Her dad got arrested for fraud; apparently it was some sort of giant national banking cabal conspiracy thing. I don't really know the details. Then her mom disappeared, very quietly, no leads or suspects, two weeks later. I went by, just to see if there was anything I could do, and she slammed the door in my face."  
  
Betty paused in her sweeping. "Did your dad do it? Make her mom disappear?" The words fell between us with the clanging, divisive power of an iron portcullis, and I scrambled for a moment, trying to figure out how she'd known.

Then she whisked a dustpan-full of down into the bag, and something in the motion reminded me of Cheryl Blossom's brisk immediacy. _We might, say, have incriminating evidence linking him to the disappearance of Hermione Lodge._  
  
"Yeah," I admitted, because I wasn't going to let Cheryl hurt me. "That's what made me respect Veronica. Once she figured it out, she came to me and told me everything. I mean, for all she knew, I could have been in on it, but she decided to trust me, because she thought I deserved to know the truth about my dad. The way she'd wished she could have known about hers."  
  
Betty paused in her sweeping. "I'm sorry, Jughead."  
  
"It's okay," I said half-heartedly, even though it wasn't really.  
  
Her hand found my shoulder and squeezed it; a little puff of down went up around us as she kneeled on the floor with me. "No, it isn't. You wanted to drop the case, and I should have let you."  
  
"It wouldn't have helped," I admitted, my throat suddenly dry.  
  
"Maybe," Betty agreed, her mouth twisting wryly. "But I was wrong, and I'm sorry. This isn't something you chose."  
  
"You didn't choose it either," I reminded her. The sympathy was getting a little cloying, frankly. "It's not like you desperately wanted your sister to fall in love with the son of a crime family."  
  
That got a laugh from Betty, a rich, golden, beautiful laugh, which came with the unfortunate side effect of causing her to drop the broom she was holding. Pillow down scattered everywhere, nearly choking both of us. Betty managed to splutter it out of her nostrils, but I somehow contrived to half-swallow it, so she ended up having to thump me on the back to get it out (errors in communication notwithstanding--apparently, I was a horrible mime, because she somehow misread my gesture of ' _thump me on the back_ ' as ' _slap me across the face_ ').  
  
"Are you alright?" Polly asked from the doorway, sounding mildly amused. The saliva-soaked ball of fuzz ricocheted out of my mouth. Betty snatched the broom up hastily and went back to work, while I retrieved the projectile and dropped it in the bag where it belonged.  
  
"We're fine," Betty added after a moment.  
  
"Do you want to talk here, or--?" Polly inquired, shifting nervously against the doorframe.  
  
I got up from the ground, fighting with all my might and main to keep from blushing. Beside me, Betty was exuding her usual plethora of tells. "How about the living room?" I suggested ungracefully. "Do you mind finishing up in here, Betty?"  
  
"I'll be okay," Betty assured me, bending down to sweep under the bed with renewed vigor.  
  
I caught Polly staring at me as she settled onto the couch. "So, how do you know Betty?" she began, with a glint in her eye.  
  
"She hired me," I explained dryly, "to find you. Which means that my job right now is to ask you questions, not answer them."  
  
"Fair," said Polly. "What do you want to know?"  
  
I took a breath and wetted my mouth with my tongue. "When did you last hear from Jason Blossom?"  
  
"Last week," Polly answered readily.  
  
"In what context?" My fingers were itching for my notebook, but I'd left it back at the office. I'd have to remember to get a new one later.  
  
"He managed to climb up the side of the building and hide in a confessional booth in the Mansion of Divine Atonement--that's where we went to pray at the group home, it wasn't really much of a mansion--anyway, it was his voice, and I could sort of see him, even though you're not supposed to look. He didn't say anything about where he'd been, but he wanted to help me escape. We decided that I'd leave on Tuesday, and he'd meet me by the getaway car he'd stashed for us off Route 40. Then we'd drive away: out of the country, of course, to make it harder for our parents to bring us back. Jason gets access to his trust fund when he turns twenty-five, and his parents can't touch that, because it comes from his grandfather. So in a few months, we were going to see about trying to work things out legally." Polly wasn't giving off many tells either way. Her eyes were meeting mine steadily, but their expression was all wrong, too much wide-eyed innocence for someone who'd seen what she had. Her entire demeanor had shifted since the conversation at Archie's house: where before she had been a shrieking, spitting, nigh-unstable tempest of betrayal and rage, now she was sweet, informative, helpful, a little naïve, but _ever_ so harmless.  
  
In other words, I didn't see any good reason to trust Polly just yet. "What went wrong?" I asked automatically, trying to get a look at her hands to check for scarring.  
  
Polly swallowed, readjusting herself. "I broke out, like Jason said, and I made it to the getaway car, but he wasn't there. I waited for him until just before sunrise, and then I walked back to my house and hid in the attic. I stayed up there for a few days, until I decided that he must have been detained somehow, so I decided to get to Canada on my own. I was going to take the ring so that in case something happened to me, Jay could know that the twins were his."  
  
"Oh," I said, for lack of a more intelligent rejoinder. "Where were you going to get the money for the trip?"  
  
Polly stared back at me. "Why would I need it? The car was stocked with everything: clothes, food, prenatal vitamins--"  
  
I cut her off, since a complete inventory of the car's contents was probably the very last thing that would help us find Jason. "Okay, so you were going to take the getaway car? Did you have any way to communicate with him?"  
  
Polly nodded eagerly. "We set up a dead drop, just in case. Down by the stump of the old Spellman oak. I checked it, but there was nothing."  
  
Now for the difficult part. "Okay. Listen, the only reason that Cheryl's not still after us is that we struck a deal. If we find Jason, she lets you go--"  
  
"That's not happening," Polly insisted, jutting her chin out imperiously. "I thought Betty said you were helping us."  
  
"I am helping you," I retorted. "Listen, we don't have any choice in the matter. We have a letter from Cheryl that we need to give to Jason. When we get his response, we give it to her. It's just a letter, no big deal. Considering that Cheryl could have asked us to find him and hand him over to her, a letter is a _very_ reasonable option."  
  
"No," Polly repeated. "No. Jason wants to be done with his family."  
  
"Do you have a better idea?" I challenged. "Because from where I'm standing, it doesn't look like there's even any reason to believe your story, let alone risk my life and Veronica's to save your boyfriend from a family reunion."  
  
"I don't want to talk to you anymore," Polly snapped, drawing the robe tighter around herself.  
  
I stood up. "Good, because I don't want to talk to you, either. Unfortunately, we're both stuck in this situation right now, so I'm going to go out and look for that car later this afternoon. If it's there, then we'll revisit this conversation. But if you think, even for a second, that I'm going to take the fall while you and your flame ride off into the sunset, then you need to go invest in a new set of delusions."  
  
Leaving Polly to stew in her own indignation, I went off to see about negotiating sleeping arrangements.  
  
Working as a detective requires a number of useful talents, and I could say with confidence that I was proficient-to-fair in all of them (even brilliant at a few) with one notable exception--the fine art of sleeping in the daytime. Even with my hat pulled over my head, the light in my eyes was nigh-unbearable, and the sound of Archie snoring gently on the couch was a definite mood-killer. Turning over, I shuffled my coat a little tighter around myself and started counting backwards from thirty-five hundred by sevens. When I got to zero, I started counting back from six thousand five hundred and one by threes. Then I did one thousand eighty-nine by elevens, and one thousand eight hundred and seventy by seventeens. I dropped off somewhere between eight hundred eighty four and eight hundred sixty seven, to a reasonably (but not completely) dreamless state of repose.  
  
Of course, the dreamless sort of sleep never lasts as long as one wants it to, and mine was no different. I woke (at a time that my watch insisted was four P.M.) to the unwelcome sight of two caterpillars performing an intricate dance.  
  
It took a bit of squinting for the caterpillars to resolve themselves into Archie's eyebrows. "Are you awake?" he whispered, jostling my shoulder. I rolled over and pretended not to be.  
  
"I guess you're not," Archie mused.  
  
Relenting, I sat up. "No, I am. What's happening?"  
  
"Polly said that I should wake you up this afternoon, because there was something you'd said you needed to do?" Of course. For a moment, I entertained the hypothesis that Polly Cooper was genuinely trying to drive me to my wits' end. I knew she wasn't, though, because if she was, it wouldn't be nearly this effective.  
  
"The car," I agreed, dragging myself up from the chair. "C'mon, Archie. We're going on a trip. I'll drive."  
  
Betty's voice sounded from the kitchen over the sound of something sizzling. "Why don't you guys wait a few minutes, have some lunch, and then we'll all go? Polly could probably do to get out in the fresh air."  
  
Well, if she was with us, then she couldn't make a run for it while we were gone. Besides, now that my nose had woken up, I could tell that lunch was going to be well worth my time. "Alright, sounds good."  
  
"Is it still called lunch if it's afternoon?" Archie inquired plaintively.  
  
Betty ignored him, whipping a pan out of the oven. "Quiche," she declared.  
  
I grinned at her. "Does that mean I'm making fruit cobbler for desert?"  
  
"You'll have to stop at the store on the way back, if you're going to, because Veronica's kitchen is wall-to-wall health food, so no sugar," Betty supplied, stirring a pan of potatoes. "Sorry, it's sort of brunch food. I couldn't really find any meat in the pantry, or I'd have done something a little more dinner-y."  
  
"Did you get any sleep?" Polly inquired, shuffling in behind me.  
  
Betty nodded eagerly. "Yeah, I did, Polly. Thanks for asking."  
  
Brunch/lunch/whatever-you-wanted-to-call-it was divine; so amazing, in fact, that it almost made me forget about the task at hand. Archie, however, was raring to go: blazing through his food like he was in a contest, tapping his foot, urging us to hurry, making faux-nonchalant comments about the amount of light remaining in the day, and overall being a general nuisance. By the time I was savoring the last bite of my quiche, relishing the interplay of textures across my tongue (and was that a slice of cherry tomato bursting in my mouth? The little _pop!_ of sweetness-- _mmmm_. Just: _mmmmmm_.), Archie had put everyone's coats on for them, and was trying to pull Betty's chair out from under her.  
  
It was a quarter till five by the time we made it to the car. Archie made the mistake of calling shotgun, despite the fact that Polly didn't fit into the backseat, so it was a further five minutes before the situation could be resolved and the car started. I ended up driving, with Polly crammed uncomfortably in the shotgun and Archie elbowing Betty into a corner in the back.  
  
Needless to say, the drive was torture, for all involved.  
  
Polly, it turned out, had very little sense of the getaway car's location. She knew it was by a sign, but all she could remember was that the sign advertised maple syrup, which didn't narrow things down at all. She knew it was off Route 40, but Route 40 stretched all the way across the state, and I had no intention of driving that far. Apparently, she would know it when she saw it, which had sounded promising, but rapidly became depressing, as all Polly could contribute to the search was "No, that's not it."   
  
Route 40 isn't well-kept; in fact, it's pretty much derelict. It was starting to get dark out, because we'd been driving around for hours, and I was turning around in my seat to see if anyone else felt like giving up for the night, when all three of my passengers let out a simultaneous screech. I veered the wheel off to the left and whipped my head around forward, just in time to go careening into a ditch. On the road, a small grey squirrel, saved by my car's noble sacrifice from a premature demise, went skittering off into the darkness.  
  
I started the car, listening as it coughed, sputtered, nearly gave up the ghost, choked a little, and then suddenly turned over and began to purr. Unfortunately, that was the full extent of its cooperation. It wouldn't go backwards onto the road, it wouldn't go forwards into the forest, and even when Archie and I got out and pushed, our only success was in turning it a fraction. Thus, fifteen minutes later, we were bumping along at two miles per hour or so in a narrow ditch alongside Route 40, while I struggled to turn the steering wheel back onto the road, and my car fought to thwart me in every respect.  
  
It was then that we slammed into something that I had hoped was a bit of a hill in the ditch, maybe even one that I could use to climb back onto the road. In reality, it was a blackened, vaguely car-shaped pile of metal, with tree branches thrown over it for camouflage. Something fell with a thunk on the top of our car as it shuddered to a halt. "There's the car!" Polly exclaimed from beside me. "What happened to it?"  
  
"My door isn't opening," Archie groused from the backseat. "I think something fell on it. It says, ' _So indulgent, it might--'  
_  
"-- _As well be evil,_ " Polly finished. "That's what was on the sign. It's the slogan for Blossom Industries' new ad campaign."  
  
"How did I not know that they were running a crime ring?" Betty asked to the air. "I mean, it's not like they were being subtle."  
  
Archie patted her condescendingly. "Betty, even I didn't figure it out. Don't feel upset." Betty ignored him in favor of crawling out of the backseat to go help Polly. Between Archie and me, we managed to shove the sign off of the car and free up the doors on our side.  
  
"Did they burn it up?" Betty asked, sniffing suspiciously at the air.  
  
"If they did, it was a few days ago," I noted. There wasn't any smell of smoke, and a few weeds had sprung up around the car.  
  
Alarm flickered across Betty's face. "Polly, why don't we wait back here?" she suggested, latching on to her sister's arm. I followed her thought process: the car was burnt up, Jason had been planning to meet Polly there, Jason hadn't been seen for days. Polly wasn't stable at the best of times, and even a stable person shouldn't have to find the body of someone they care about.  
  
Polly, however, also followed Betty's deductions. "No," she whispered, sinking onto the hood and moving a hand protectively to her stomach. "Jason's not dead, Betty."  
  
"Okay," Betty murmured. "Okay, Polly."  
  
I scrambled forward and smashed the car's window to reveal--nothing. No skeleton, at least, for which I was incredibly thankful. A pile of ashes that it would take ages to sift through, but which seemed to correspond to Polly's description of the car's contents (food, clothing, prenatal vitamins, and other doubtless fascinating treasures).  
  
"Hey, Jughead?" Archie yelled from the outside of the car. "I think I found a clue!"  
  
I withdrew my head from the window and followed him around to the front of the car, where--well, yes. It was definitely a clue. In front of the car, the grass had been burned into a pattern that resembled the two halves of a yin-yang sign, taken apart from each other, flipped so that the fat ends both faced down, and inscribed into a new circle. Either that, or it was a pair of badly drawn wings.  
  
"Here's my theory," Archie explained excitedly. "What if this is the sign of a new gang, just starting to make a power grab? So this is their calling card, and they found out about Jason and Polly and  so they did all this to make sure the Blossoms know they're watching them, biding their time and waiting for the right moment to strike?"  
  
"Could be," I said, trying to seem appropriately intrigued by his theory as I led the way back to the car.  
  
"What's going on?" Betty asked once we got inside.  
  
I traced the symbol out on her hand with my finger. "Have you ever seen this before?"  
  
She shook her head. "No. What is it?"  
  
"It's burned in the grass outside the getaway car. They must have used some sort of blowtorch to do it," I explained, banging on the dashboard when the car didn't start. "Listen, I think something's wrong with the car."  
  
Betty hopped out. "I'll take a look."

Polly held out her hand. "What did the symbol look like? Show me."  
  
I traced it a few times, watching her face for signs of recognition. But she sat back, seemingly mystified. "I've never seen that. What is it?"  
  
"I don't know, but I think I can find out. I know someone who knows all sorts of old gang symbols, so I'll start with him."  
  
"Was he a gang leader?" Archie asked, his face alight with interest.  
  
"Sort of," I hedged. "He was a police detective, and then a PI like me."  
  
Archie looked like he wanted to inquire more, but Polly stepped in. "Not all symbols are related to gangs, though, right? Maybe this one is a symbol for something else."  
  
I shot Polly a grateful look and resolved to dislike her a little less. "That's a good point. Archie, when we get back, can you run to the library, if it's still open, and see if you can find any sort of reference book on symbols?"  
  
"Okay, but I think I have an intuition, so I don't know why we have to look. It's going to be a gang sign," Archie proclaimed.  
  
Betty slid back into the car with a satisfied air. "This is Riverdale; any unexplained symbol is probably a gang sign. Can you try the engine again?"  
  
The car roared to life with a vengeance. Throwing it into reverse, I powered us out of the ditch and back onto the road. "How'd you do that?" I asked.  
  
"I wasn't sure it would work," Betty explained, "but I borrowed some of Dilton's modifications. Basically, I rerouted the power from--"  
  
I cut her off. "Betty, you're talking over my head here. Just for my peace of mind, can you tell me: is whatever you just did to the car going to kill us?"  
  
Betty chewed her lip. "I don't think so. I mean, if the hydraulic--"  
  
"I don't know what that is. What's the percent likelihood that we're getting blown to bits?"  
  
"Pretty sure it's negligible? I modified the modifications, or else we'd be looking at something more like thirty percent for this particular model," Betty concluded.  
  
I breathed a sigh of relief. "Okay."  
  
"Jughead's going to go visit a police detective private investigator gang leader," Archie observed from the backseat.  
  
Betty shot me a telling glance, and I could see that she'd worked it out. _Well, my dad used to work for the police, but he got laid off and started up a private investigation business._ "Right. To figure out that symbol."  
  
We didn't do much talking after that. Archie tried to start up a game of "I Spy," but there was nothing much to spy but dark forest, so he gave it up in favor of staring out the window. There was some brief discussion of who would drop off whom, in which Archie and Polly wanted to drop me off, and Betty took my side, probably because she'd realized that I didn't want to talk about where I was going. In the end, I dropped them off at the library, with strict instructions to stay out of sight, keep together, and wait for my return.  
  
I watched them go into the building, before turning around into the shady part of town, passing my office, driving down a side alley into the even shadier part of town, passing three alleys, turning down a dingy side street into the shadiest part of town, and parking. Pulling my coat up and my hat down, I looked all around to make sure nobody was watching, and ducked through a badly painted door. On the other side of the door lay a crooked staircase, which led in turn to a disreputable hallway reeking of cabbage, beer, and smoke. With another quick glance behind me, I hastened through it, trying to stride purposefully, as if I belonged there.  
  
Towards the end of the hallway, I slowed down and started looking at nameplates, until I finally stopped in front of a thick wooden door labeled F. Jones, which was scarred over with cigarette burns, scratches, and huge gouged-out chunks. There wasn't any knocker, and I didn't want to get splinters in my knuckles, so I kicked gently at the bottom. "Dad? It's me. Can you open up?"  
  
No response.  
  
I kicked the door again, then gave up and started picking the lock. It gave easily (too easily, especially considering the number of people who would love to see my dad dead). I flicked the light switch on as I stepped inside, but the single bulb on the ceiling didn't do much more than deepen the surrounding shadows by comparison.  
  
"Jug," said my dad from the couch.  
  
I crossed the room and bent over. "Dad, I swear to God, if you're drunk--"  
  
"Nope," he interrupted, popping the 'p' and sitting up. "Just tired, Jug. It's past my bedtime. What've you got for me?"  
  
"I'm on a case," I responded laconically, leaning down to inspect him. The circles under his eyes had lessened since our last encounter, but only slightly, and his gaze, though alert, was guarded and steely, as if he was gauging what I had to offer him. Hard times, then. "Found a lead, thought I'd get an expert opinion."  
  
"So you came to your old man," he supplied, leaning back and steepling his fingers. "Well, then. Let's have it."  
  
I took a deep breath, kneeled down on the floor, and reminded myself that I was an adult now, a better man than he would ever be, and there wasn't any reason to feel inadequate under his scrutiny. "It's a symbol. They burned it into a crime scene."  
  
"What's the scene?" he probed.  
  
I shook my head. "Doesn't make the need-to-know cut."  
  
"Well, aren't you high-and-mighty these days," my dad mocked, shaking his head. "Need-to-know, my ass."  
  
I ignored him in favor of pulling over a pad of paper and sketching the symbol out. "This is it. I figured you might have a line on it." He took it and twisted it around in front of his face to get some good light. I waited for him to set it down so I could get a read on him.  
  
Finally, I could wait no longer. "What is it?" I asked, because if he hadn't known, he would have told me so immediately.  
  
He set the paper on his lap and stared me down hard. "Crime scene, you said. Cold case?"  
  
"Past year or so," I replied vaguely. "Why?"  
  
His eyes flipped around the room for a second, as if he wasn't sure what to say. Then he focused back on me, and I knew he'd made his decision. "What'd you think it was?" he asked, scanning my face hungrily.  
  
"Wings, maybe, or a yin-yang symbol flipped around," I returned instantly. It wasn't even worth the effort to lie to him, as I'd learned many times when I was younger.  
  
The corners of his mouth twitched up. "Naw, you've got it wrong, Jug. It's a letter S, see here, and another one off to the right, backwards."  
  
I took another look at the symbol and noted the features he pointed out. "Okay, so what's it for? Probably not the Secret Service."  
  
He gave a little chuckle. "Secret Service, huh. Didn't think of that." His mouth twitched again, cynically this time, and then before I could prepare myself he had leaned forward on the couch so that our faces were barely feet apart. His eyes locked on mine with a predatory intensity. "Listen, Jug, I didn't grow up the way you did. I had nothing, pretty much since birth. Never had anything, never would have anything, ran away from a home at age seven and never looked back."  
  
I had heard this story before. "You lived on the streets, hand to mouth, training yourself in what you needed to know to survive, et cetera. I know all that; I'm pretty sure it's the only bedtime story you ever told us. What's the connection?"  
  
"I wasn't the only kid on the street."  
  
I took a moment to put things together. "So there was a gang of you? Street kids?"  
  
"Yeah. Called ourselves the Southside Serpents," he expounded. "That right there on the paper was our sign, and don't go after me for lack of creativity, boy. I was thirteen when it started, and I didn't have any fancy art classes."  
  
I considered reminding him that he hadn't ever let me take art classes, no matter how much I begged, but I decided it wasn't worth it. "So you're saying that the person who burnt the symbol into the ground was one of the Serpents, or knows one. Can I get names?"  
  
That brought him up short. "What do you want names for?"  
  
"It's an ongoing investigation. I need to follow up any lead I can get," I explained. He knew that, though, or at least he should've.  
  
He grabbed at my arm. "Listen, the people in that gang went to one of three places: jail, the cemetery, and the suburbs. The gang fell apart when I was nineteen or so, and the police already know all about everything we did. So I don't know why it got burned into your crime scene, but my guess is that it's just to throw off the scent."  
  
"Names," I repeated. "It's kind of a life or death case, so anytime in the next hundred years would be fantastic."  
  
He pulled the paper towards him and eyed me with a scowl. "Don't go sassing me, Jughead."  
  
"Wouldn't dream of it, _sir_."  
  
"There," he said, folding the paper up, "that's everyone that would have known the symbol. Not all of them were Serpents, though, so don't go throwing accusations around helter-skelter just yet."  
  
I took the paper and made it halfway to the door before I remembered Cheryl's threat. "Dad?"  
  
"Yeah?"  
  
"If the Blossoms come round, don't let them in. I mean it. No matter what they say."  
  
The lines of his face hardened. "This need-to-know case of yours--is that for them?"  
  
"Not if I can help it," I replied, stepping across the threshold. "Stay safe."  
  
His reply was muffled in the door.  
  
I waited until I got back to the car to open up the list. It read:  
  
_Alice Johnson_  
_Dale Becker_  
_Casey Briggs_  
_Leland Meeks_  
_Neil Horne_  
_Randy Truman_  
_Sidney Palmer_  
  
I folded the list, relieved at the lack of the name "Cooper", and started the car.  
  
Unsurprisingly, Betty and the others had come up empty at the library. "It kind of looks a little like an ancient fertility symbol," Betty explained the instant she opened the door, "but some of the squiggles are off, I think. Besides, why would you burn a fertility symbol next to the wreck of a getaway car? It just doesn't make sense."  
  
"It's not a fertility symbol," I explained. "It's an old gang sign."  
  
"I _knew_ it," Archie whispered.  
  
I ignored him. "I got a list of people who might have known about it. Can you take a look and see if you recognize any of the names?"  
  
Betty plucked the list off of the dashboard and started reading it. Barely a moment went by before her face went stark white. "Polly, look," she murmured, passing it up to her sister.  
  
"Who?" I asked, trying to read it off her face.  
  
"My mom," she whispered.  
  
There hadn't been a Cooper on the list, but--  
  
"It's her maiden name," Betty continued. "Alice Johnson."  
  
I took a deep breath and let it out so that it puffed through my lips. "Okay. We're going to work with this. Let's get back and try to think things through--"  
  
The car door opened behind me. Cursing under my breath, I unbuckled myself from the seatbelt and scrambled out, feeling my pulse accelerate raggedly in my neck. "Betty," I pleaded, lowly and urgently, "tell me that you aren't about to go do something that could probably get you killed."  
  
She shot me a bitter half-grin over the top of the car. "Sorry, Jughead." Her eyes were starting to go red at the rims, but her breathing was peaceful and controlled. Contradictions upon contradictions, as always. "I really would, but I don't want to lie to you."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, I feel sort of honor-bound to admit that I didn't make up the names on the list: they're just what happens when you pull up the Wikipedia for Twin Peaks in one window and for Scream in the other, and then randomly match first and last names. As you can probably tell, none of them are important. 
> 
> Alice's maiden name is from her actress's character on Twin Peaks, and will be fixed whenever Riverdale gives me her canon maiden name. (For instance, if you go back to previous chapters, you will notice that Jellybean no longer lives in Chicago. Toledo it is!)
> 
> Let me know what you think!!!


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Well, this one's a doozy. More Bughead moments than this entire fic to date, an Awkward Family Dinner (TM), a big, scary reveal, and The Girl Talk Show (featuring Hal Cooper).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi guys! Um, I feel kind of awkward saying this, but I got a Tumblr recently. It's formergirlwonder.tumblr.com (oh, and massive love to jandjsalmon for all her help!)
> 
> Anyway, definitely drop by there and say hi! I think I've begun to crack my own mystery here, so hit me up with all your best whodunnit theories! 
> 
> Lux Radio Theatre and its advertisement for French beauty soap is a real thing from this era...sigh.
> 
> I'm definitely in denial about Riverdale being almost over...

By the time I had finished explaining to Archie that he needed to drive Polly back to Veronica's, Betty had made it to the end of the block. Under normal circumstances, I never run (unless my life is in danger), but these were not normal circumstances. Betty was trying to hail a cab; she would succeed at any moment, and when she did, I might lose her.  
  
I'm not an especially quiet runner, but she didn't turn around when I came up behind her. "Betty," I puffed from a foot away.  
  
"Are you going to stop me?" She spoke icily, her words brittle, clipped, and desolate, her eyes fixed in front of her, her back rigid.  
  
"What are you going to do?" I half-whispered, and then tried to think of a joke to cover up the fact that I sounded genuinely frightened for her sake. "I mean, if you're going to go throw away the rest of that quiche, then of _course_ I have to stop you." Betty didn't reply, but she turned to look at me. Her eyes found mine, and, well--  
  
My entire career depends on my ability to read people, to look into someone's eyes and understand them, to guess someone's next move by the twitch of a muscle. But there I was, and Betty Cooper was looking at me, and I had nothing: no idea of what she was thinking, or how she was feeling, or whether she wanted me to stay, or what her next move would be, or even what I could do to help her. Maybe I should have looked harder, or looked more objectively. Maybe the exact same expression on the face of a stranger, or the face of an old friend, would have been revealing.  
  
Maybe, I didn't know what to think because all I knew was tells: how to read someone who was hiding the truth. But Betty was looking at me, and my throat didn't work right, and I had an unshakeable sense that her entire soul was there laid out on her face, but I didn't know how to read it because I'd never had anyone look at me without holding something back.  
  
I realized, suddenly, with a leaden feeling that sank from my stomach to my toes, that my hand had reached forward to brush a tear-damp strand of hair back behind her ear, and it was lingering beside her cheek. It shook as I clumsily lowered it to her shoulder.  
  
"I don't know what I'm going to do," Betty confessed softly after a long moment, her shoulder heaving a little under my hand. "I just--I just want to do something."  
  
"Well, what do you want to do?" I asked. "Honestly."  
  
"Honestly," she repeated contemplatively. "Honestly, I'm not sure. I'm just--tired. Of people lying to me."  
  
I bit down on the inside of my cheek. "I understand."  
  
She smiled cynically, dashing off a bittersweet laugh. "I mean, I had this crazy fantasy of just storming in and throwing the list down, and telling her everything. But--that doesn't fix this, does it?"  
  
"Hey, if it makes you feel better, then it seems worthwhile to me," I declared recklessly. Betty smiled, her eyes wistful. A hand crept up to her shoulder, and I swallowed, preparing for her to move my hand away, or tell me to let go. But her fingers laced into mine, and stayed there.  
  
"What did you do?" she asked suddenly.  
  
I tried to play it off. "You mean what _would_ I do? I'm not honestly sure--"  
  
"I meant, what did you do when you found out about your dad?" she clarified, even though we both knew I'd understood her the first time.  
  
I shrugged callously, stuffing my hands in my pockets and glancing down at a spidery crack in the pavement as I tried to sound indifferent. "The usual. Screaming fit, I trusted you, how could you ever do this to me, all that jazz. Then I grabbed my sister and moved out."  
  
"Did it work?" Betty asked, with interest and understanding (but none of the overbearing, stifling sympathy that less astute people tend to assume my story requires).  
  
"No," I admitted, looking up from the pavement. Our eyes locked together with a decisive click, like two magnets when you set them down on a table and let go. "He's still a liar," I added, jokingly.  
  
She smiled a little, before sobering up again. "Do you think my parents have anything to do with this?" she asked, staring at me with steely equanimity. It sounded for all the world like she was asking where I wanted to go for coffee.  
  
"We don't know anything at this point. Your mom is just one of eight people who could have burnt the symbol into the ground," I pointed out.  
  
Betty frowned and chewed at her lip. "But I've never seen any of the other names, and I'm pretty sure they don't have any connection to the Polly side of things. And if it's about the organized crime, then why burn the getaway car?"  
  
She made good points. "I know, but we should cover our bases still. In the meantime, since your parents have the most tangible connection to the case right now, we should at least take a look."  
  
"Dinner," she blurted.  
  
I resisted the urge to grin down at her, and then gave up. "Dinner as in what, Cooper?"  
  
Betty looked down and started twisting her hands, biting her lip while simultaneously smiling, and--was that a blush? Then again, she was probably just nervous about passing me off to her parents without embarrassing either of us. "I was thinking that maybe you could come over to my house for dinner, and then we could try to search the house afterwards while my parents listen to the radio."  
  
"I don't know…" I pretended to deliberate, stroking my chin thoughtfully, "your parents sound sort of terrifying, to me. Are you sure we're going to be safe around them?"  
  
Betty snorted. "I'll protect you from their crippling judgement. Are you in?"  
  
I pretended to give it a little more thought. "I'm not sure this is a good idea, Betty…"  
  
"I could ask Archie," she teased.  
  
"I'm in," I announced. "Seriously, if you take Archie, they'll know you're up to something in six seconds flat."  
  
"My mom probably wouldn't let him in the door," Betty added. "She hates him. Anyway, we can't exactly say you're--"  
  
"Who? A private investigator who you've been blowing off work and narrowly avoiding death with?" I quipped sarcastically. "You're wounding me." Now that I knew that she wasn't going to put herself in reckless danger (at least, not without inviting me along), I felt as if a twenty-pound weight had been lifted from my shoulders, leaving me lighter and freer than I had ever known I could be.  
  
Betty narrowed her eyes a little, turning her head to the side as if she was trying to get a different angle on me. "I was going to say, coming to spy on them, but it still applies. Do you mind being someone from my paper who's helping me plan the exposé?"  
  
I forced myself to act like a professional. "I don't mind. Do you have a specific person in mind for me to impersonate?"  
  
"Do we need one?" she inquired with interest.  
  
"Probably better. That way, if they get suspicious and call the paper--"  
  
"--to confirm that you work for them, we're still safe," she finished. "Let me think for a second…um…not Ambrose, he'd be doing the sports section today, um, maybe Frankie? I don't know…"  
  
"While you think, do you mind if I start trying to get a cab?" I interjected. "What time does your family normally serve dinner?"  
  
"Eight thirty," she replied absently. A moment later, she mused, "Adam Chisholm might work. He talks about himself a lot, which saves you the trouble of coming up with a convincing backstory."  
  
"Can't you find something easier to pronounce?"  
  
"Chisholm," she repeated, enunciating it clearly and then spelling it out. "He covers the local crime beat, he's an only child, and he moved to Riverdale from Paterson two years ago. Before you ask, neither of my parents has ever been to New Jersey, so that element of the cover is safe. He likes dogs but not cats--"  
  
"Okay, okay. Even I don't need this much information. I'm pretty sure they're not going to be able to find out this much about the real Adam Chisholm. Unless you talk about him to them?" I asked, observing her reaction out of the corner of my eye as I flagged down a cab.  
  
Betty's nose wrinkled in distaste as she ducked inside. "No, I definitely don't. When you meet them, you'll see why."  
  
Well, that didn't sound ominous at all. "Alright. Do you have a cover story for where you spent last night?"  
  
"212 Spile Road, please," she directed the driver, before turning back to me and speaking in a hushed undertone. "I was thinking I'd use the same one I've been using for investigating the exposé," she suggested pointedly.  
  
I grimaced. "Sorry. Forgot this wasn't your first rodeo."  
  
"No, it's fine. You should probably know, anyway. I've been pretending to be interviewing a woman named Lydia Wyndham for my graduate thesis on freedom of information during the First War. Mrs. Wyndham knows--I met her through some school friends, and she's willing to cover for me, since we already got the interview done. I'm pretty sure she thinks I'm out dancing, or-- _something_ ," Betty finished with a self-deprecating smile. "I told her I didn't really do that, and she just winked and said that still waters run deep."  
  
I sniggered at that. "Well, then. Anything else I need to know?"  
  
Betty's eyebrows furrowed up a little. "They work for a rival newspaper, so if they ask you questions about the article, feel free to tell them it's an exclusive. The radio is in the living room, which is fairly far away from the main staircase. My room is on the second floor, and their room is right down the hall, so we can do most of our searching up there. The only other places I can think of to search are the attic and the basement." The driver shot us a faintly suspicious stare through the rearview mirror. I held his gaze and shrugged, as if to say, _Not my business how she wants to spend her time, right?_ He examined Betty, decided she was the sort of girl a man would do crazy things for, examined me, decided I was the sort of man to do those sorts of crazy things, and then went back to driving with a smirk.  
  
"Polly was _living_ in the attic, though," I pointed out. "So I'm not saying that there isn't anything there, but I think the other places are more likely."  
  
"Okay," Betty agreed. "We'll start with the second floor, and then check the basement." Barely seconds later, the car pulled up at the Cooper house, which looked exactly as cookie-cutter perfect as it had yesterday. I paid the driver while Betty was still fumbling in her purse, and then opened the door, squaring my shoulders and preparing to accept whatever fate awaited me with stoicism.  
  
"Chisholm, right?" I confirmed. "From Paterson? Did I start at the paper first, or did you? And how old am I?"  
  
Betty took a moment to maneuver out of the door before she replied. "Right; right; you've been there a year and a half versus a few weeks for me; and I don't know for sure, but probably twenty-five or so," she rattled off rapidly.  
  
"Got it," I said, advancing up the steps determinedly, Betty at my side. "You ready?"  
  
"I have to know, Jug. One way or another," she insisted resolutely, her eyes fixated on the knocker.  
  
Tentatively, I reached out and squeezed her hand, the way I used to squeeze Jellybean's whenever a scary movie became too much for her. (The resulting damage to my carpal bones was nothing compared to what could have happened if her crying had gotten loud enough to annoy my father.) "Hey. It's going to be okay," I murmured softly, reaching out to tap the knocker. She squeezed back.  
  
At least, I hoped it would be okay.  
  
The door swung open slowly and silently, and Betty dropped my hand as if it had burned her. Framed in the entryway was a middle-aged man, wearing a button-down shirt without a tie, with a shock of grey-brown hair and an expression that looked alternately harrowed, nervous, and indignant. "Betty? Where the hell have you--hold on, who exactly is this?"  
  
I stepped forward and held out my hand, meeting his eyes firmly. "Adam Chisholm, sir. I'm a colleague of your daughter's from work."  
  
He took it and shook it for a second too long, looking me over the whole time as if I was a jigsaw piece he was trying to fit into a spot that it didn't belong in. "Hal Cooper. Riverdale Register."  
  
Beside me, Betty stretched her face into an infectious grin. "Adam's helping me with that article I'm writing, Dad. Did you get my phone message?"  
  
"Mr. Chisholm, can I borrow my daughter for a second?" Hal asked, the lines around his eyes tightening up.  
  
"Of course," I agreed graciously, stepping through the door. "Is there someplace I can put my coat and hat?"  
  
"Closet under the stairs," he indicated, jerking his head ungracefully at it as he led Betty into an adjoining room and closed the door. I hung up my things and then loitered around in the hallway. I couldn't make out any of the words, but Hal's voice remained at a normal volume, which I counted as a win.  
  
"Who are you, and what are you doing in my house?" said a voice, a little behind me on the right. I recognized it as the voice from the phone: Alice Cooper, née Johnson, probably an ex-Serpent, possibly a murderess, wearing what appeared in my peripheral vision to be a pink shirtwaist with white trim. Turning on my most insouciant brand of charm, I swung around slowly.  
  
"Good evening, Mrs. Cooper," I drawled, watching her face to make sure she hadn't remembered our conversation. She tensed a little, blinked once, and that was all. "I'm Adam Chisholm, a colleague of Betty's from work," I added, since I appeared to be safe from recognition for the moment.  
  
Something tightened and throbbed in her neck, and for a second, I worried that I'd been made. Then the door behind me opened, and Hal and Betty came out. Alice's jaw relaxed, and a sugary smile plastered itself across her face. "Good evening, Adam. Please, call me Alice. Betty, how was your day?"  
  
Betty was having a hard time meeting her mother's eyes, and I didn't blame her: the woman's hawk-like gaze was petrifying enough, and that was without considering the vast, uncharted ocean of secrets that lay between them. "Good, Mom. I was up in Midvale interviewing Mrs. Wyndham again."  
  
"That woman's a treasure," Alice declared. "But I do worry that you're taking up too much of her time, Betty. Are you sure you're not inconveniencing her?"  
  
"I'm hungry," Hal observed meaningfully, meeting his wife's eyes. "Maybe we should go eat."  
  
"I didn't know we'd be having guests," Alice observed, pinning me down with a glare.  
  
Hal drew himself up a little straighter. "According to Betty, she sent a phone message to let us know."  
  
"There wasn't any phone message, Hal, so what exactly is your point?" Alice snapped, sweetly and mockingly.  
  
"We have a guest, Alice, and we'd be remiss in our hospitality not to offer him dinner, since our daughter seems to have _taken it upon herself_ to invite him," Hal declared, leading the way to the dining room without leaving any further room for argument. Alice shot me another undefinable look (maybe I just couldn't read women with the last name Cooper), then swept after him, dragging Betty by the arm.  
  
I followed them, trying my best not to think about the countless ways to disguise the taste of poison in food.  
  
Dinner, as it turned out, was apparently steak, with mashed potatoes, rolls, and a salad, and true to Hal's word, there was plenty to go around. I loaded up, but made sure to only help myself to areas of the serving plate that the others had already touched. It didn't _taste_ poisoned, which was good, I supposed.  
  
"Betty, are you sure you can eat all those potatoes?" Alice questioned from the head of the table (which could have also been the foot, depending on your point of view).  
  
"I must have taken too large of a spoonful," Betty agreed. "I'm sorry, Mom."  
  
Alice pursed her lips around her fork. "Don't apologize to me, Betty; apologize to your body. How is Mrs. Wyndham doing?"  
  
"Good," Betty stammered hesitantly. "She's dug up a diary kept by one of her friends who was a censor for Army correspondence."  
  
"I heard a rumor," Alice observed, with the sly laziness of a cat stalking a bird, "that she's feeling a little under the weather. Was she…coughing? Today?" Her eyes narrowed on Betty.  
  
"A little," Betty hedged. The tips of her ears crept past seashell-pink and into lobster-pink.  
  
"Did you wash your hands after you finished the visit?" Alice queried sharply. "This isn't a good season for you to get sick."  
  
Hal gave a jovial-yet-strained laugh from the other end of the table. "When is it ever a good season for someone to get sick, Alice?"  
  
His wife stabbed viciously at a spinach leaf, but said nothing. Dinner continued in silence for several minutes, during which Hal scrutinized me, I scrutinized Alice, Alice scrutinized Betty, and Betty scrutinized Alice right back.  
  
"Lovely weather we're having, isn't it?" Hal observed tightly. Nobody answered.  
  
"Hal," Alice observed after a moment, "I can hear you chewing from over here. That doesn't set a very good example for Betty's table manners, now, does it?"  
  
Hal took a single bite of steak and chewed it with an exaggeratedly polite motion, then raised his eyebrows across the table at Alice, smiling with a mocking insolence. "Better, sweetheart?"  
  
"Much better," Alice declared, throwing back a sip of water as if it was a tumbler of Scotch.  
  
The silence lengthened out. "Alice, darling, I think you've smeared your lipstick on the glass, and as much as I admire the… _wanton_ look, I'm not sure it's very appropriate for a woman of your age."  
  
Alice held up her glass and inspected her reflection in it, correcting the outline of her lipstick and smoothing her hair back behind her ears. "There. Do I meet your exacting standards of female beauty now, Hal?" she sneered.  
  
Her husband raised his glass approvingly. "There's my wife again," he pronounced, with a smug gleam in his eye.  
  
The silence stretched out from horizon to horizon like a trackless desert. For the first time, I found myself wishing for Archie, who would probably have made enough social mistakes by now to alleviate at least a portion of my discomfort and misery. I would have traded every bite of my meal for a friendly face. (Betty didn't count, even though she was more my friend than Archie: here in her home, barely batting an eye at this warped, distorted, we're-a-normal-happy-family-of-sociopaths reality, she felt like a stranger. What I wanted was another outsider, someone to trade bewildered expressions with across the table.)  
  
After what felt like an eternity of torment, a high-heeled shoe found my foot under the table and tapped three times. I followed Betty's eyes as they flickered to the door and tapped three times back.  
  
Betty bestowed a sunny smile on the table at large as she stood up. "Dad, Mom, Adam and I are going to go work on my article. We'll use the second floor office, if that's alright."  
  
"You're not excused yet, young lady," Alice reprimanded Betty sharply, her eyes darting over to Hal.  
  
Hal, for his part, cleared his throat. "Betty, your mother hasn't excused you."  
  
"May I be excused?" Betty requested politely.  
  
"No, you may not be," Alice retorted, "not until you finish that glass of water. I'm not going to be around forever to take care of your health, and frankly, I shudder to imagine how you intend to survive without me."  
  
Betty muttered something into her water glass that sounded like it contained the words "college" and "just fine".  
  
"Were you talking to your mother, Betty?" Hal inquired dangerously.  
  
"No, Dad," said Betty meekly, obediently sipping at her water. When she had drained it down to the last drop, she turned to her mother again. "May I be excused?"  
  
With a disdainful (yet barely perceptible) eye roll, Alice gestured to the door. "I'll wash up. Hal, why don't you go turn on the radio? Make sure it's loud enough that I can hear it from the kitchen. I'd hate to miss out on tonight's doubtlessly _fascinating_ programme." The way she said it, you could practically hear the extra e.  
  
I nearly tripped over myself in my eagerness to escape. Behind me, Alice was probably making a comment about my gaucherie, but that wasn't my business. She didn't have to like me, she just had to not be a murderer.  
  
"Sorry," whispered Betty sympathetically as soon as the office door closed behind us. "They're intense, I know."  
  
"You weren't exaggerating," I noted, whistling a breath out through my teeth. "How long is the radio program?"  
  
"An hour," Betty answered. "How long is it going to take to search?"  
  
"Depends on how many rooms there are in this floor, not counting yours," I replied, sinking into a chair by the desk.  
  
"Two bedrooms with adjoining bathrooms and closets, and an extra closet for storage," Betty rattled off.  
  
"That shouldn't be too hard," I decided. "How about you start in the storage closet, while I sweep the basement?"  
  
"Okay," Betty agreed, collapsing bonelessly onto a stool. In the harsh fluorescent lighting, she looked young, frightened, and tired. I felt a sudden pang of contrition: nobody should ever have to search their own house for evidence of a murder.  
  
"Do you want me to do it?" I asked gently.  
  
"No," she insisted, tight-lipped, and I let the topic go. Bending down, I unlaced my shoes and pulled them off until I was left in my stocking feet. Betty cocked an eyebrow at me.  
  
"Can't make any noise," I explained, and she nodded and began to work at the strap of her heels.  
  
Below us, the radio was blaring out a loud fanfare. "CBS Presents Lux Radio Theater! Sponsored by Lux Toilet Soap: a beauty soap made in the French method, for maximum glamor."  
  
It was time to go. Leaving my shoes behind, I pushed myself out of the chair, nodded at Betty, and crept down the stairs to the first floor. This was the difficult part: to get to the basement stairs, I had to briefly turn past the central hallway that connected the living room and kitchen: past Hal Cooper, who was situated in a huge tan armchair with his back to me; past the kitchen, where Alice Cooper was--making a phone call? I slowed to a stop.  
  
"No, don't you dare brush me off," she was snarling lowly, "I want to know if you sent him." A pause. "Well, the instant that boy walked in, I knew exactly whose son he was, even from _behind_." I froze against the wall, straining to hear more. "The family resemblance is striking, so don't even try to convince me otherwise. We both know you can't pull one over on me like that." Alice gave a bitter laugh. "Yes, well, that's all self-explanatory," she continued, "I want to know why he's in my house, masquerading as someone named Adam Chisholm." A pause. "I'm not going to stop until I get the truth out of you," Alice growled, and her tone sent a chill down my spine. "And you didn't think it might be a good idea to warn me that I might be getting a little investigative visit from the progeny of the great F.P. Jones? Oh, don't you use that tone with me. You know what? Forget I called. I'll figure it out myself." The _click_ of the receiver hanging up sounded eerily like the snapping of a neck. I shuffled quietly down the staircase, hoping against all hope that Alice Cooper hadn't noticed me.  
  
I had been  made, I was in trouble, I needed to get the hell out--but first, I was going to search this house and get some damn answers.  
  
The basement was fairly straightforward in layout, and it appeared consistent in size with the overall area of the other floors, when the size of the garage (which I estimated from the size of its door) was taken into consideration: conclusion, I wouldn't have to worry about secret rooms. My mind whirled frantically as I practically dashed about the room, rifling through the bookshelves, sliding a hand between the cushions of the armchair, tapping gently at the walls to check for hollow spots, feeling at the underside of the small table. But there was nothing to be found, which made sense, I reasoned. It was Alice Cooper we were investigating, not her husband, and this was clearly his domain, down to the book selection, which dealt almost entirely with sports, automobile repair, and famous works of investigative reporting through the ages.  
  
I took the stairs two at a time, on tiptoes, sliding to a stop when I made it to the landing. Hal Cooper was still engrossed in his program, while Alice, apparently finished with her phone call, was humming brightly as she chopped up vegetables. She was probably imagining chopping me up as she did it, but she didn't seem to be coming after me for the moment, so I breathed a sigh of relief as I headed for the stairs. Betty met me on the second-floor landing. "The closet's clean, I think," she breathed lightly. "Basement?"  
  
"Clean," I murmured, "though your mother is getting suspicious of me. I heard her on the phone with someone."  
  
"We need to hurry, then," she decided. "Their bedroom's that one."  
  
I ducked inside the indicated door and took a look around. Here, unlike in the basement, Alice Cooper's taste predominated. The bed's trappings were a pale, bloodless pink, so subdued it might as well have been white, while the hangings on the curtain were a deep, rich green. Betty, who had seen the room before, knelt immediately and started feeling around under the bed. "Can you do the closets?" she suggested a moment later, when I showed no signs of setting to work in the immediate future.  
  
There were two closets: a walk-in and a wardrobe. I picked the walk-in at random, and ended up face-to-face with Alice Cooper's selection of dresses, skirts, and blouses, arranged neatly in three rows according to length and season. The floor was level with the floor of the bedroom and didn't squeak when I pressed down on it, while the walls were perfectly smooth and the rods were entirely solid. I felt in the pockets of the dresses and came up with nothing. "Clean in here," I reported.  
  
Betty was tapping at the headboard. "Nothing so far for me either. You do my dad's wardrobe, I'll check the bathroom."  
  
Nodding my agreement, I crossed the room to Hal Cooper's wardrobe, which came in two parts: three drawers down below, housing an assortment of pants, underclothes, ties, and socks, and a closet above, with two doors that opened outward to reveal various shirts and jackets. I felt along the sides of the drawers: nothing. Along the sides of the walls: nothing. I stuck one hand inside to measure the depth in comparison to the wall: barely an inch of leeway. Leaving the top half open, I pulled open the first drawer again, then froze.  
  
Between the first drawer and the upper half of the wardrobe, there looked to be an entire two inches of wood, evenly divided by the lip of the drawer so as to seem innocuous. Tentatively, I rapped once on the shelf: hollow.  
  
"Bathroom's clear," said Betty, coming up behind me as I felt around for a seam. There was a small irregularity in the grain of the wood, and I pried my thumbnail under it, lifting it away. As one, Betty and I leaned forward. Her breath tickled at my neck as we leaned over to glimpse the contents.  
  
There, lying neatly folded, was a bloodstained blue and gold jacket with the clear monogram, "Jason."  
  
Betty clamped down a hand hard on my shoulder, biting back a cry with a painful inhale. The horizon shifted hazily around us as I clutched at her sleeve like a drowning man at a buoy. "Oh my god," she whispered, her face ashen, and then her arms wrapped around my neck, and I realized she was stifling a scream in my shoulder. My hands fisted in her hair, more for my own comfort than hers: in that moment, Betty Cooper was the only stable, tangible, or real thing in a nauseatingly dizzying universe.  
  
We ended up on the bed, still grasping at each other as we drew shaky, too-quick breaths and I tried not to think about how I was the sort of private investigator who found missing dogs and old money transfers, not the sort who found the bloodstained jackets of murder victims.  
  
"I can't stay here, I can't look them in the eyes," Betty was mumbling into my collar in a panicked litany, "we have to go, we have to get out of here."  
  
"The truth," I said, and stopped, because there was nothing to say. Betty understood anyway.  
  
"Okay," she said, taking a deep breath as she let go of me, her fingers uncurling themselves from the fabric of my shirt by slow millimeters. Her hands twitched as if she wanted to dig her fingers into them again, and I turned back to pull her from the bed. Lacing her hands tightly around one of mine, I drew her to the edge of the wardrobe. "You don't have to look," I soothed.  
  
"Neither do you," she retorted unsteadily. "I'll be fine--oh _god_." Her nails sank themselves deep into my hand, but not deep enough to draw blood yet. I lifted the jacket out carefully and set it down, examining the hollow. There was a dried-up stain in the wood, as if the blood had dripped off the jacket, which--  
  
"It's his, all right," Betty confirmed from behind me. I turned back; her eyes were glazed and shallow, and her voice was choking up. Our linked hands shook in unison. "It's from his swim team in college. Polly wore it around, back when they were public." There was a trickle of blood down her chin from worrying her lip so hard, and I wiped at it with my free hand.  
  
Betty closed her eyes and squeezed my hand harder, but without applying her nails this time. My heart was thudding like I'd just run a marathon, and I could feel my skin turning clammier by the moment. Steeling myself for the worst, I lifted the jacket.  
  
Both sleeves had been raggedly torn off, and the blood was concentrated on the upper front of the jacket. There was no bullet hole or knife tear that I could see, but the fabric was soaked through. I estimated the blood loss at two pints or so.  
  
"How many can you lose?" Betty asked, and I realized that I had been speaking aloud.  
  
"Three pints, maybe four, and then you go into hypovolemic shock," I recited numbly, folding the jacket and putting it back. "Help me make this look normal?"  
  
The act of resealing the cavity felt dirty, like it made us somehow ourselves complicit in what had happened to Jason. When it was over, we took turns in the bathroom, cleaning up and putting on a face: me first, and then Betty, who came out looking freshly spruced and only vaguely harrowed. I, on the other hand, still looked like the nervous wreck I was.  
  
"We need to get out of here," Betty insisted once we were back in the office, breathing hard and clutching at each other's hands like a lifeline.  
  
"We can't raise suspicion," I countered.  
  
"What am I supposed to do?" she hissed violently. "Kiss him goodnight? Look him in the eyes, and say, 'Sleep well, Dad?' We both know I'm a horrible liar, Jughead."

I closed my eyes and breathed in and out tremulously. "Okay," I whispered, feeling giddy and sick and fearful and breathless all at once. "Okay. Here's what we're going to do. The radio program's over in five minutes. After that, I'm going to leave. Go down the hall to the top of the stairs and tell your mother you're not feeling well, and you're going to take an aspirin and go to bed. Stay there, and pretend to be asleep until I come for you."  
  
"Okay. You're right. You'll have to wait until after they go to bed--" Her voice crept up a fraction of a step as a sudden thought occurred to her. "God, my dad's a murderer, Jug--"  
  
"--we don't know that--" I interjected automatically.  
  
"--how are you going to come without him finding out and hurting you?"  
  
I swallowed, watching the ground swim under my eyes. "I don't know, okay? Just, please, we don't have much time, you have to trust me, okay?"  
  
"Okay," Betty agreed, nodding rapidly. "Okay. Okay."  
  
I leaned my forehead into my hands. "I--I've never done this before. Never this sort of case," I confessed, worrying my lower lip.  
  
"It's going to be okay," she murmured tremulously. Below us, the radio program drew to a close with a final, jeering trumpet blast.  
  
"I have to leave," I said, but didn't.  
  
"Alright," Betty agreed, clutching my hand tighter.  
  
"I'll come before the sun is up," I promised, memorizing every last feature of her face to carry with me until then.  
  
"Okay," said Betty, staring at the door behind me. I heard footsteps in the hallway--heavy, a man's. _Hal Cooper_.  
  
Slowly, I raised our interconnected hands to my lips and brushed a kiss across them. "You'll be alright, Betty. We can do this." Gently, but firmly, I began to disentangle my fingers from hers.  
  
"I'll see you in a few hours. My window will be unlocked; there's a ladder in the garden shed. The window for their room is on the other side of the house, so I'll turn my light on and off twice to signal you when they're asleep. I'll pack a bag with a week's worth of clothes. Will that work?" she asked, pulling the rest of her hand away from mine with a violent jerk, as if she was ripping off a bandage.  
  
"Yes, it'll work. You're brilliant." After a moment, I added, "Are you okay?"  
  
"No," she answered, smiling sadly. "Are you okay?"  
  
"No," I admitted, trying to find words to describe the way the world was swirling around me, the way every color except red looked dead, the way I felt so immeasurably older than ever before. The words didn't come, though, and Betty didn't need them anyway.  
  
The footsteps were on the landing now. "Good night," I murmured, and fled without looking back.  
  
Hal Cooper was waiting for me the instant I shut the door. "So, how long have you known my daughter?" he asked, his eyes glinting with a sly, knowing, _we're-all-men-here_ look. I felt suddenly, violently ill.  
  
"I really can't stay to talk, Mr. Cooper. I promised my mother I'd be back before ten-thirty," I replied, searching behind him for an escape route.  
  
"You live with your parents still?"  
  
"Just my mother, sir. And you needn't worry. I respect your daughter very much," I added. "She made her--feelings clear tonight, and I won't be coming back."  
  
His portly face contorted with barely-disguised interest. "Oh, is that so? Who's the lucky man, then?"  
  
"Wouldn't you know already?" I queried bitterly.  
  
He slapped me on the back and chortled. The sound raised every last hair on my neck. "Adam, if you ever have children, you'll find that it isn't so simple. They never tell you anything. So, if you happen to know, I'd love to hear."  
  
"I think that's your daughter's secret to keep," I hedged, darting past him.  
  
His hand clamped down on my arm like a vise. "It's okay to tell me. I'm her father. I deserve to know."  
  
Like an idiot, I blurted the first name I could think of, in what was hopefully a convincingly bitter tone. "Archie Andrews, okay? She's in love with _Archie_." Hal dropped my arm in bemused, good-natured confusion, and before he could recover, I was at the bottom of the stairs. I yanked open the closet, grabbed my coat and hat, and sprinted away from the house as if my life depended on it.  
  
I didn't go far, though. There was a shadowy corner near the fence on the other side of the street, and I doubled back there after a few minutes of running. There, under the disguising foliage of an ornamental maple tree, I spread out my coat and sat down, watching the darkness of Betty Cooper's window, timing the passing seconds by the thudding in my chest as I waited for light to come.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!
> 
> I'll just be quietly sitting over here, enjoying the fact that I TOTALLY (inadvertently) CALLED the Blossom Maple Syrup/Organized Crime Empire...


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The balcony scene, the return of Ethel, Veronica, and Cheryl, a heart-to heart in a syrup barn, and a revelation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First off, sorry for the long wait. For anyone who hasn't seen it already, go check out allumina's crazy-amazing art for this fic! It's SO GOOD! Link is [here ](http://allumina.tumblr.com/post/160673217669/got-inspired-to-make-art-for-formergirlwonder-s)
> 
> Thanks for reading!

It was well past one in the morning when Betty gave the signal. By the time she got to the second blink, I was already on my feet, crossing the road to the Cooper house.  
   
Betty's plan was brilliant; unfortunately, it had one rather unfortunate drawback, which was that the ladder in the shed was overly long and so heavy, it might as well have been made of solid lead. Archie could probably have picked it up and carried it, if he tried, but I don't have the blessing of elephantine musculature, so I ended up lugging it along the grass, end-first, with both hands, pausing every thirty seconds or so to stretch out my back. Then, when I got below Betty's window (after an incident in which the end of the ladder caught on a shrub, directly below Hal Cooper's window, causing my heart to plummet down to my toes), there was the difficult business of trying to stand the blasted thing up on end and get it against her window without waking the neighborhood, which was…not easy.  
   
At this point, I was going to consider us spectacularly blessed if we made it out of here without being noticed and promptly shot by Alice and/or Hal. The ladder, as if sensing my frustration, tumbled back against me again, and I braced my knees and _shoved_ at it, harder than was perhaps strictly advisable. It smacked against the wooden siding of the house with an almighty bang that probably sent aftershocks into the next five counties. I ducked behind the nearest available concealment, which happened to be a plastic wheelbarrow over by the fence, and waited with bated breath for one or both Coopers to wake up, start trying to figure out what made the noise, notice the ladder, find me, and call the police to arrest me.  
   
Nothing happened, except that Betty Cooper crossed over to the window and opened it up. "Jug?" she whispered into the night. "Are you there?"  
   
The yard was immersed in silver-blue moonlight that ebbed and shifted into rippling, dappled puddles of shadow near the house. Between my hiding place and Betty's window lay about twenty feet of unbroken, exposed grass. The silence was dangerous; pulsating, beckoning. The instant I stepped out into the open, anyone could see me, and I wouldn't be able to see them. It was dangerous, and dumb, and every good instinct I had was crying out against it, was begging me to wait a while, just until anyone who I had awakened would have given up and gone back to sleep.  
   
I closed my eyes and decided to take stock of the situation logically. If her parents had somehow managed to sleep through all my racket, then it was safe to run across. If I'd woken them up, I was dead whether I ran or not: therefore, it didn't matter whether or not I ran across, so I should just go ahead and do it. I was going to do it.  
   
Keeping as low down to the ground as I could, I darted across the yard. My breathing was ragged, more from panic than from exertion, and my shoes were making little slapping sounds against the dewy grass. I gained the base of the ladder and glanced back to check that I wasn't leaving any recognizable footprints. I was in luck: the grass was thick and springy, and by the time the Coopers woke up and found Betty missing, any record of my presence would have vanished.  
   
Adam Chisholm, unlucky reporter for the Riverdale Herald, would probably get taken in for questioning, though.  
   
The rungs on the ladder were solid under my fingers, and my hands weren't slipping, which was good. My head drew level with the window, and I smelled something a little flowery, with a touch of vanilla and coconut.  
   
Something hard slammed into my skull from above. "Ow!" a female voice hissed softly. My hat flew off my head, and I clung to the ladder for dear life, even though what I really wanted to do was rub very hard at the knot that was probably coming up on my forehead. My vision swirled, hazy and black, as an unaccustomed breeze ruffled my hair.  
   
"Jug! Oh my god, are you okay? Did I hit you?" I squinted up into the window and dimly made out Betty, who was holding a hand to her forehead and peering at me. "I was just looking out to see if you had come yet, and--"  
   
"We bashed each other's skulls in," I summarized. "Got it. I'm just glad it wasn't your mom with a frying pan. Are you packed?"  
   
For answer, she grabbed a suitcase off of her bed. "I think it's everything. I wrote a note, if you want to take a look."  
   
"Are you sure you need a note?" I asked, hitching my leg over the windowsill.  
   
Betty's hand appeared in front of my face. "Want some help?"  
   
I grasped it firmly in mine, observing it as if for the first time. It was small and lean, with callouses on the pads of the fingers and the top of the palm (not to mention the interlocking rows of scar tissue), and the nails were painted over, although I couldn't make out the color in the dark. Her fingers were surprisingly strong as she tugged me through the window: this wasn't the sort of polite assistance you offer someone stepping out of a car, it was the sort of determined grip mountain climbers use to haul each other up onto a narrow ledge.  
   
Then again, what was I thinking? Of course Betty Cooper had strong hands and arms: she'd been a cheerleader, she fixed cars in her spare time, she typed sixty words per minute and made it look easy. So I guess what surprised me was this: she didn't think twice about taking my hand and drawing me into her life.  
   
The note was scribbled in loopy cursive across the back of a business card. It read simply: " _Gone to find Polly. Don't look for me. Not coming back. B._ "  
   
I grinned a little and shoved it to the center of her desk. "Perfect."  
   
"That's what I thought. See, they're not going to want to bring the police in, because that means exposing the whole Polly thing to the world."  
   
I hefted her bag experimentally in my hands. "Anything breakable in here?"  
   
"Nope," she confirmed, spinning around the room to take one last glance. Closing her eyes, she drew her fingers gently across a row of snapshots above the bed. Betty and Archie with a picnic lunch spread out between them; Betty and Polly in identical cheerleading uniforms; a teenaged Betty and her mother making pie dough in the kitchen, Alice's hand over Betty's on the rolling pin; Betty as a toddler, asleep on her father's lap, his eyes turned down adoringly as he pressed a kiss into her hair--  
   
I clambered down the ladder as quickly as I could to give her some privacy while she said goodbye. When I (finally) gained solid ground, I held my arms out for the bag. "Okay, toss it."  
   
Even in the darkness, I could tell that Betty was scrunching up her eyebrows in the way that meant suspicion, confusion, _what the hell_ , and in this case, _are you really sure this is a good idea?_ "Okay," she agreed, more than a little dubiously.  
   
I caught it, but just barely, and I definitely wasn't graceful about it. Betty's quiet laughter floated out of the window. "Alright," I grumbled, "you catch it next time, Betts."  
   
She snorted a little as she gingerly approached the edge of the sill. "Okay, can you hold it steady? I'm coming down."  
   
I set the bag down and headed for the base of the ladder, bracing a hand against each side and staring resolutely ahead as a pair of tan heeled pumps lowered slowly past my face, followed shortly by long legs and a powder blue wrap dress.  
   
"Thanks," Betty said, alighting on the ground between me and the ladder. She turned around, and her eyes came to rest--a few inches below my eyes.  
   
I was imagining things, I decided regretfully. It was late at night, we were running for our lives, our means of escape could have been ripped from the pages of a romance novel, the necessity of holding the ladder had compelled me to get just slightly closer to her than was strictly acceptable, and what I was-- _had been_ contemplating was highly unprofessional, not to mention a surefire way to get us both killed. There was no world where Betty Cooper would look at me as if she wanted me to kiss her.  
   
I stepped back and dropped my hands from the side of the ladder. "We'd better get going. Where's your car?"  
   
"Down the street," Betty supplied, pointing. I grabbed my hat from where it had fallen on the fencepost and set off, carrying the suitcase with the wheels up so that it didn't make any noise. She fell into step beside me, and didn't look back.  
   
I cast a furtive glance over at her as we walked, noticing the determined set to her eyes, the slight shakiness around her mouth, the way she rubbed at the gooseflesh rising along her arms. "You cold?" I inquired conversationally.  
   
"The car's warm," she deflected. "And my coat's in the bag; I just didn't think to wear it."  
   
I shrugged out of mine while she was talking and draped it around her shoulders, just in time for the start of another round of wind. "Thanks," she murmured, pulling it tightly about herself.  
   
The wind blew at my bare head, and when I turned around to ask Betty which car was hers, I was practically hit with a deluge of golden curls. "No ponytail?" I asked belatedly, realizing I probably should have noticed earlier.  
   
She shrugged, her shoulders oh-so-thin under the bulk of my coat. "Thought it was time for a change. This one's mine, by the way."  
   
It was a car utterly unbefitting of Betty: small and red, stubby, a little graceless, with an immaculately lacquered exterior. "Let me guess. Your mom?"  
   
"Got it in one," she muttered with a sarcastic smile as she fiddled with the lock.  
   
I threw the suitcase into the back seat and slipped into the passenger side as she started the engine. "I'm thinking we should meet up with Archie and Polly at Veronica's. They're going to be wondering what happened to us."  
   
Betty's hands tightened on the leather of the steering wheel. "I'm going to have to tell Polly." Her voice was nervous, yet somehow distant and neutral, as though she was observing herself from on high. She turned to me as she stopped the car at a corner, and the lost look in her eyes started a thick, throbbing ache in my chest. "Jughead--what if we're wrong?"  
   
I swallowed. "It's not a good situation, but at least it's safe. What if you stayed there, and then we were right?"  
   
Betty frowned into the night. "That doesn't answer my question. I mean, it's just a jacket. What if my dad just found it, and was hiding it because he didn't want to be suspected of the murder?"  
   
I stared out ahead. "Betty, you told me you wanted the truth, no coddling."  
   
"I do," she replied, with steely resolve. Her eyes sought mine out with a blinding, piercing intensity. "Tell me."  
   
I looked away. "Blood congeals within three to fifteen minutes of exposure to open air. The blood on the jacket was still liquid when your dad put it in the cupboard. There was a stain on the wood where it leaked through." I said it factually, without any sort of sympathy, because it was the way I would have wanted someone to say it to me.  
   
She nodded slowly, and her neck tensed once, suddenly and convulsively. That was all. "So if it wasn't him, he saw who it was, which means it was probably her."  
   
There wasn't any point in turning back from the truth now. "Yes."  
   
"Oh god," she murmured. "What do we--" She broke off suddenly. "Jughead, I think he knows something's up. After you left, he came into my room, he just kept on asking me if I was feeling okay, and what happened when you were up there with me--Juggie, what's so  _funny?_ "  
   
I couldn't help it. I'd tried to hold it in, but my self-control was shot to bits, and there was a blush creeping up the backs of my ears. There are only so many ways to smother a laugh without being noticed. "Yeah, that's my fault. He started asking questions about how long I'd known you, and I needed to get out of there, so I said that we'd fought because you were--" I couldn't say it. I broke off in another hysterical giggle, even though this was, by and large, the least funny situation I had ever been in overall. My dad would probably have kicked me to the ground and told me to man up, but I was here in the car with Betty, which meant that I could giggle all I wanted without fear.  
   
"Jughead Jones, I swear to God--" Betty began menacingly.  
   
I caught my breath. "I told your dad that you had a desperate, burning passion for Archie."  
   
That did it. We both started giggling, and then the giggles turned into peals of laughter, and the peals turned into crashing tsunamis of hysteria. Everything always seems a hell of a lot funnier when you're at the end of your tether.  
   
Somehow, miraculously, we managed to stop laughing before we got in a car accident. By that time, we were nearly at Veronica's, so we drove the rest of the way in silence, punctuated by little snorts of laughter as one or the other of us thought of a new dimension to the situation.  
   
"I mean," Betty pointed out as she parked the car, "he probably actually believes it. I had this huge crush on Archie in school, down to writing ' _Mrs. Archie Andrews_ ' on every piece of homework I turned in for a year. My teacher actually had to call my parents in for a meeting over that."  
   
For a breathless heartbeat, I remembered the way her face had throbbed with longing and disgust as Archie kissed Veronica in the Blue and Gold, and the joke didn't seem quite so riotously funny anymore. "What happened?" I asked, dragging myself out of the car feet-first, even though the seats were comfortable and this was the second all-nighter I'd pulled in a row.  
   
Betty grabbed the suitcase from the back in a fluid, practiced motion. "Long story short? I started having bigger things to worry about." I laughed at that and reached to take the suitcase from her.  
   
Archie threw the door open. "Hi guys! What happened?"  
   
"Okay," I said, "how did you know that was us? What if that was someone you didn't know, like the Blossoms?"  
   
"Stranger danger, Archie," Betty commented sagely. "You never know who could be trying to kill you these days."  
   
"I saw your car," Archie explained.  
   
"How did you know it was us in the car?" Betty interrogated, crossing her arms.  
   
Archie quailed. "Um, I didn't really. Anyway, Polly's gone out, but she left a note. I wasn't supposed to open it until you guys got back."  
   
My breath caught as I whirled to face him down. "You let--you _listened_ to her? How long has she been gone, Archie?"  
   
"I don't know!" Archie retorted defensively. "What was I supposed to do, tie her up? Knock her out?"  
   
"You could at least have read the note!" I insisted.  
   
"Which would be _wrong_!"   
   
I set my jaw. "How long ago did she leave, Archie?"  
   
He squinted. "It was around nine, I'm sorry, Jughead, I just thought she was going to pick up something from her house--"  
   
"We were at the house, Archie, Polly wasn't there, so where was she?" I snarled.  
   
Behind us, the bedroom door closed and locked with a thunk.  
   
My heart plummeted through the floor. "I'll go talk to her," Archie volunteered. "It's my fault."  
   
"No. We should leave her alone. She's had a rough night," I offered. "I think she needs space."  
   
Archie looked despondent. "I--I didn't--I'm sorry. I should have done something."  
   
"Go to sleep, Archie," I suggested, stretching out on the couch with a tired, worn-out smile that strained my face. He nodded and headed for the guest bedroom.  
   
We both pretended not to hear the quiet, agonized, pillow-muffled sobs racking the air.  
   
There are very few things that can be guaranteed to wake me. Unfortunately, one of them is daylight--call it a side effect of spending a few years on the streets, but the instant the sun's up, so am I, unless I've got all the window shutters drawn and my hat over my head. I hadn't thought to do any of that last night (due to unforeseen circumstances), and so the early morning light had streamed in through the windows, gilding the walls. I stumbled off the couch and into the kitchen, where I found an apple and spread almond butter all over the outside. Simple, yet scrumptious (and healthy, according to Ron).  
   
Retreating with my prize to the breakfast nook, I munched peaceably, perusing the newspaper for anything related to the case. Unsurprisingly, I came up empty, except for an article speculating on who might be declared the CEO of Blossom Maple Syrup, now that Clifford Blossom had announced his imminent retirement to shareholders. I skimmed it and decided there was nothing new to be gleaned.  
   
"We're taking them out," a voice declared, sliding into a seat across the table. I lowered my newspaper. "The Blossoms," Betty clarified, her eyes burning with deliberate intent. "We're going to Thornhill today. We're going to rescue Veronica, and we are going to find enough evidence to bring down every shred of Blossom-backed crime in Riverdale."  
   
I stared at her, just to check that she knew the magnitude of what she was saying. She stared back, her eyes crisp and clear. "Why?" I asked.  
   
Her lips folded up. "I'll explain on the way. Call Ethel, will you?" She stood up from the table, her hands pressing heavily into the wood. "We're going to need all the backup we can get."  
   
"Okay," I agreed. "I'm in."  
   
"Good," she said curtly. "Between the two of us, they don't stand a chance."  
   
When she walked away, there were little rusty smears on the table where her hands had been. Taking a moment to pop the last bite of apple into my mouth, I stumbled after her. "Betty, your hands--"  
   
"I'll deal with them later, can you go wake up Archie?" she deflected, half-turning around.  
   
"Let me see them?" I pleaded.  
   
She turned around to face me then, slowly and calculatedly, as if she was inviting me to look at her, really look. Water and fire collided in her eyes; her lips were dry, cracked and parched and bitten bloody; her chin jutted upwards so harshly that it seemed as if some puppet-master was yanking it towards the sky; her shoulders roiled with a gathering storm, and her hands--  
   
Oh, her hands. They had bled, and then been scrubbed raw to get the blood off, and then bled again. The scars I knew had been scratched and clawed and torn out of existence, and her skin was frayed and tattered around the edges of the wounds. "Jesus Christ," I breathed, catching her hands at the wrists. "Does it hurt still?"  
   
"I don't want it to," she replied, staring down at her hands as if transfixed.  
   
I started leading her towards the bathroom. "So why'd you do it? You think if you hurt yourself enough, you get used to pain?"  
   
"I'm not your project," she hissed, ripping her hands out of my grasp. "Stop trying to fix me."  
   
"I'm not trying to fix you, Betty," I retorted, "I'm trying to rinse out the gaping _wounds_ on your hands so they don't get infected. Are you going to let me, or not?"  
   
"Polly's gone," she said, her voice sounding hollow and dead.  
   
I stared at her, dumbfounded. "I know Polly's gone, what about your hands?"  
   
Betty ignored me. "The Blossoms. Polly went there, because of the deal I made with Cheryl."  
   
"What?"  
   
For answer, she dug a folded piece of paper out of her pocket and passed it to me. It was worn, as though it had been folded crisply, unfolded, refolded, unfolded again, cried over, crumpled up and thrown into a wastebasket, rescued, smoothed out, and folded once more.  
   
_Dear Betty,_ it read, in careful, almost childish cursive,  
   
_I'm so, so sorry about all of this mess. I know that what I did was wrong, and I'm sorry I tore our family apart. But I'm not going to turn Jason in to the Blossoms, even if it's to keep you safe. I'm going to give them what they wanted all along. I don't want you to worry about me, even though I know you will. I promise you, I'm okay. They just want my twins; they're not going to hurt me. I started this feud, which means it's my job to fix it before more people get dragged into the crossfire. Just stay out, alright? Or else everything I'm giving up is pointless.  
   
With more love than you know,  
   
Polly_  
   
I blinked and looked up. "I'm sorry, Betty."  
   
Her mouth twitched a little in anger. "I don't want sympathy. I want to take the Blossoms down, and get my sister back."  
   
"I know," I said.  
   
Betty regarded me for a second, her head tilted to one side, then nodded and reached for the faucet. She turned it on and lowered her hands gently into the icy spray, biting back a little hiss at the pain. "Do you want bandages?" I asked, already looking for them.  
   
She shook her head. "It draws attention to them."  
   
"They'll heal faster," I pointed out, pulling the gauze from the cupboard. "At least until we're actually there."  
   
"Okay," she said, holding out her hands.  
   
I set to work, tying the gauze around her wrist and wrapping it right-to-left across her palm. "Do you want to talk?"  
   
"No." Her eyes were fixed on the frame of the door. "Not yet."  
   
I finished with the gauze and picked up her other hand. "We'll get her back, Betty."  
   
"And Veronica," she reminded me, taking the gauze from me and finishing up herself.  
   
"And enough evidence to take the whole operation down," I agreed, heading off to call Ethel before I did something stupid, like kiss her hands in a non-' _your dad might be a murderer and we're both terrified out of our wits_ ' way.  
   
Ethel, luckily for me, was awake. "Jug? Holy hell, what's going on? You've been completely out for days, and so has Ron--"  
   
"Yeah, there's a reason I had you forge that note. The Blossoms got Ron," I explained tersely. "We're breaking into Thornhill today, to bring her back and gather evidence against them. Are you in?"  
   
The other end went silent. "Ron's been…oh, _shit_." Knowing Ethel, she was probably pacing a hole in the carpet just now. "Jug, you're crazy. Do you have any sort of plan?"  
   
"I was thinking something along the lines of, 'go, snoop around, and don't get caught'," I replied sarcastically.  
   
On the other end, Ethel took a deep breath, held it for an impossibly long time, and then sighed it all out at once. "Okay. I'll come."  
   
"You're the best, Ethel. How soon can you make it to Ron's place? It's you, me, Betty Cooper, and Archie--that's the redhead from the bar."  
   
Ethel groaned on the other end. "Of course this is for the Cooper case. Should have guessed. I'll be there in ten."  
   
Archie came out of the guest bedroom, fully dressed and looking determined. "Betty told me what happened. What's the plan?"  
   
I drew a blank, seeing as there was no plan to speak of. "Well, I've called a contact of mine who's game to provide backup. She'll be showing up in ten. After that we get in the car, and we drive…"  
   
"To Thornhill," Betty declared, emerging from the bathroom. "Once there, we'll split up. Archie and Jug, you guys snoop around. Get Veronica, get evidence, get out. I'll go in under a false name as a reporter for the Herald, and interview the Blossoms for an article about Jason. We know next to nothing about them, and they're major players in whatever's going on. Ethel's our swing player: she needs to keep Cheryl distracted so she doesn't recognize me, and go in if something goes wrong." As she spoke, she started twisting her hair into a knot at the base of her neck.  
   
"Mkay," said Archie. He headed for the dining room.  
   
"Bit of help?" Betty asked, her arms contorted behind her head. "My hair's acting up today."  
   
I motioned for her to turn around and took the rope of hair from her. "Swing player, huh?" I murmured. "You take theater in college?"  
   
She handed me a hairpin, smoothing a flyaway behind her ear. "No, I had a neurotic cheerleading coach who wished he was the director of a Broadway musical."  
   
I snorted as I maneuvered the pin through the base of her bun. "This good?"  
   
She felt at it experimentally. "Tighter?" Without waiting for me to try again, she extracted the pin and practically stabbed it in, following it up with five more. "There," she said, shaking her head vigorously. "Should stay. Does Veronica have any glasses?"  
   
I squinted, trying to remember. "Yeah, she does. Try her room, maybe."  
   
When Betty came out of the bedroom a moment later, I had to blink a few times just to make sure that it was really her. She looked… _mousy._ A tweed skirt Ron had purchased for a Halloween costume clashed subtly against a cabled sweater that looked like something Alice Cooper _might_ have bought, but only if it was on sale. She wore no makeup, but her face was obscured with thick glasses, and her hair was choked back so tightly that it conformed to her skull like a hat. "Marcy McDermott, Riverdale Herald," she introduced herself, her eyes downcast. I shook her bandaged hand: it was unassuming, with a bland, serviceable sort of grip. "Do you think you could remember me enough to give a description in a few hours?" Betty asked, reverting back to herself. I didn't appreciate her smile enough: when her eyes were shining, it faded into the background, but now, all on its own, it sparkled: effervescent, incandescent, and brimming with life.  
   
I surveyed her, up and down. "Me? Yes. The Blossoms? Probably not. They see people as cogs in machinery, so you're safe."  
   
She grimaced expressively, leaning against the wall near my shoulder. "I know you're not supposed to dislike people without giving them a chance, but I really hate the Blossoms."  
   
"You should," said Ethel loudly from the front room. Betty jumped back a little as Ethel's head poked into the hall. "Oh, sorry, guys. Door's unlocked, by the way. Nice outfit, Betty."  
   
Betty held out her arms. "See? You don't have to sex up to go undercover, E."  
   
Ethel snorted. "I never said that, Betts, I said you had to sex up to go undercover at the B and G. You look really red, Jug."  
   
I willed the flush out of my cheeks. "Must be the light, Ethel. Sorry I've been out of touch."  
   
"You should be sorry," Ethel chided, laughing fondly. "I was starting to plan your funeral!"  
   
I shrugged a little. "I've got nine lives, you know."  
   
"And at the rate you're going, you've used them all up," Ethel retorted. "C'mon, let's head out."  
   
The drive was a little more comfortable this time around, since Archie sat in the shotgun, where he couldn't elbow anyone too badly. He was abstracted and a little quiet; Ethel and Betty chatted in the backseat like old friends.  
   
"What exactly are we looking for?" Archie asked in a nervous undertone as we made our way up Thornhill's five-mile back entrance.  
   
I gave it a bit of thought. "Well, Veronica, first. Evidence? Anything goes. Obviously, a smoking gun would be nice--"  
   
"Smoking gun?"  
   
"Conclusive evidence, like if they had some sort of ledger with all of the names of their enforcers and all the crimes they've committed, neatly tabulated," I explained.  
   
"Do gangs keep those?" Archie asked wistfully.  
   
I sympathized. "I wish they did. Short of a smoking gun, we're hoping for anything we can use as a lead--something that gives us an idea of somewhere else to look."  
   
"Okay," said Archie, but he bit his lip and looked down, and I was totally screwed. I was going into the belly of the beast, and my backup was getting stage fright.  
   
"Are you going to be okay, or do you want Ethel to go in instead?" I asked.  
   
The instant it was out of my mouth, I regretted it. Of course he didn't want Ethel to go in, because he was feeling insecure about being dead weight. I was an idiot, and I was totally asking for the profoundly injured sort of smolder that Archie was currently trying to level at me. "I'm not useless," he insisted. "I'm not."  
   
"Okay, then," I said, with a mental note to brush up on my pep-talk skills. After a moment, I added, "You found that gang sign. That was helpful."  
   
No response.  
   
"We're here!" Betty announced from behind me. "I'm going in."  
   
I turned around in my seat and grabbed her hand. "Betty, wait. We need to make sure Cheryl's out of the way, first. Give me, Ethel, and Archie twenty minutes to scope things out before you go in."  
   
She narrowed her eyes at me, as if she was trying to figure out whether or not I was doing this to protect her. "Fine. I'm going in after that, though. I mean it."  
   
"Okay," I agreed. "twenty minutes. Here's my keys; park the car off on the side of the road, where it isn't visible. If Veronica's in the same bedroom they locked her in last time, then this should be quick."  
   
"Good luck, guys," said Ethel, getting out of the car. "If I'm not back in an hour, I'm tailing Cheryl."  
   
I could practically hear Archie's heartbeat as we crept along. His breathing was heavy, and he'd furrowed his eyebrows like he was determined to do--something. I didn't know what it was, or why he was determined to do it, but he was definitely determined to do it, alright. "You okay?" I asked again.  
   
"Fine," he growled.  
   
I squinted up at the house from behind a bush. "Okay, if I remember right, then Veronica's locked in Cheryl's room."  
   
"Do they do this often?" Archie asked, a note of confusion creeping into his voice.  
   
"They have history," I explained briefly, because there wasn't any word that began to explain Cheryl and Veronica. Even I didn't really understand them.  
   
"Histo-- _oh_ _no_ ," Archie breathed, the color bleeding out of his face as his eyes flicked upwards.  
   
I followed his gaze, my eyes flashing up a pair of legs, past a torso with a pair of arms crossed over it, and coming to rest on a dark-haired face, which sported an expression of gleeful, vindictive cruelty. My gut quailed, but I set my jaw firmly.  
   
Goddammit. I really hated Reggie Mantle.  
   
"Run!" Archie yelled. "I'll hold him--" He broke off suddenly, gulping, as the iron-shod toe of Reggie's boot collided with his stomach.  
   
"Shut up, both of you," Reggie snarled. "Stand up, hands in the air."  
   
"Didn't know you could talk, Mantle," I drawled, getting to my feet and wishing I'd brought a gun. "Congrats on passing kindergarten."  
   
Reggie, rather predictably, took the bait. "You think you're so funny, Jones," he sneered. "What the hell are you doing here?"  
   
"Picking wildflowers," I retorted. "You gonna arrest me, Mantle? No felonies yet, which means a citizen's arrest is illegal," I added, mostly for the sake of Archie's education.  
   
"I don't give a damn whether it's legal or not," Reggie growled. "Walk."  
   
"Which way?" I asked. He finished patting Archie down and moved on to me, and he wasn't gentle about it, either.  
   
"Syrup barn. I'd give directions, but you obviously know your way around the place." I picked out a nice falsetto register and started cheerfully bemoaning the damage to my virtue that would undoubtedly ensue if I went into such a dark place alone with such a big, bad man as him. Then Reggie got a gun out of his coat pocket and asked me (none too politely) to cease and desist, so I regretfully shut up.  
   
The syrup barn was big, with barrels stacked along the walls and pipes running up and down and around the room. I touched one, experimentally, to find that it was boiling hot.  
   
"I thought the maple syrup was just a front!" Archie whispered from behind me. "They actually make it? For real?"  
   
"That pipe comes straight from the evaporator," Reggie warned. "You want to burn your fingers off, then touch it some more. Hands out in front."  
   
In a methodical, businesslike way that suggested he did this often, Reggie cuffed me to Archie, and then cuffed Archie to a vertical pipe. While he was doing it, I tried to think of an innovative joke about handcuffs, and came up empty. When you've heard one, you've heard them all.  
   
"Stay put," Reggie warned, heading for the doorway.  
   
I bit back a chuckle. "You cuffed us. You think telling us to stay put is gonna help?" He slapped me across the face for that, but I considered it worthwhile.  
   
"Leave him alone, you bastard!" Archie roared. "I swear to God, I'll kill you!" He looked like he might cry, and I tried to get him to look at me so I could indicate that it hadn't even been a very hard slap. But I couldn't tap him on the shoulder, since we were cuffed, and he was yelling so loudly that he couldn't hear me clearing my throat. "We didn't do anything to you! Why are you doing this? We're just trying to--" He swallowed the rest of the sentence, gulping a little.  
   
Reggie's face lit up with slow, vindictive delight. "Trying to do what?"  
   
Archie caught a breath and held it, his voice breaking a little, but his eyes steady. "I won't tell you. You can torture me, and I won't break. I'm not afraid of bullies."  
   
For a splintering, wrenching moment that twisted and wrung my stomach like bread dough, it looked like Reggie was going to take Archie up on his threat. Then his shoulders relaxed, almost lazily, and his eyes rolled derisively. "You know what? You're not worth my time, anyhow. Trust me, you're going to wish it was me you were dealing with by the end of this."  
   
The door slammed, leaving us in utter darkness.  
   
"You didn't need to stick up for me," I said. My voice was harsher than I'd ever heard it sound.  
   
"Yeah?" said Archie bitterly. "Yeah, you're right. I don't need to do anything. I should just sit by and let people be hurt, because I'm not qualified to help."  
   
"You found the--"  
   
"Stop babying me!" Archie yelled. "That gang symbol was enormous, okay? That's like when you have an Easter egg hunt, but with a second hunt for the two-year olds, with huge eggs just lying around all over the grass. Stop humoring me. I mess up, and I make mistakes, but _so do you_ , so stop acting like I'm your annoying kid brother who you're babysitting!"  
   
I sighed. "Archie, we might very well get shot in the next few minutes unless we do something right now, so can this wait?"  
   
"And there you go again," Archie proclaimed. "I want to help, and all you do is mock me!"  
   
He was right, of course. I had been mocking him; moreover, I had somehow enjoyed it. The realization made me feel a little sick. "Archie, I'm sorry," I said, feeling like the words were somehow inadequate.  
   
"Forget it," he said dismissively, sinking down against the pipe and dragging my hand down to an uncomfortable angle. "I just mess everything up."  
   
"You couldn't have stopped her--"  
   
"Shut up," said Archie. "Every time, you and Betty end up in trouble because of me. I walk into your office; Cheryl Blossom kisses me to knock me out and lure you up there. I drive Polly home; she decides to march into Thornhill and turn herself over to the Blossoms."  
   
It was true, of course. "Yeah. That happened, Archie, so stop dwelling on it. Listen, do you think Cheryl was just born with the ability to shoot a fly at forty yards?"  
   
"No," said Archie, "but now--"  
   
"Shut up about _now_ for a second, Andrews. I'm trying to be inspiring, here, and you're in my way." I took a breath and made my decision. "Arch, how do you think I learned to read faces?"  
   
"How?" said Archie with interest, his injured pride forgotten.  
   
I swallowed. "By being lied to." I couldn't bring myself to elaborate. "That's the thing. You have to learn to win by losing."  
   
"Okay," Archie agreed, nodding. "Win by losing. Is there a way to apply that here?" He looked hopeful, and it hurt.  
   
I turned around and took a good look at our prison. "Don't think so, sorry. Is the pipe hot?"  
   
Archie felt at it with his forehead. "No."  
   
"Okay," I said, taking a closer look. It was rusting over a little, and when I kicked at it, it groaned. "I'm going to move in closer to give you a bit of slack. Can you try and get us free?"  
   
Archie tugged experimentally. "Yeah," he grunted, tugging harder. "I think I can--ugh!" The pipe groaned and swayed again. "Maybe if I--" said Archie through gritted teeth, bracing his feet on the ground and tugging at the pipe with a hand. It squeaked in a way that left me wary of the barn's structural integrity. "Just give me a--" He strained, his shoulders bulging out beneath his shirt. With a metallic _clang!_ , the pipe gave out: we were free.  
   
I checked my watch while Archie rubbed at his wrists. It had been precisely twenty-five minutes since we left Betty. "Shit," I swore, tugging on the cuffs. "Archie, we've got to go. If I know Reggie, he went to get Cheryl."  
   
That got through to him. "Okay. Where to?"  
   
I ran through the options in my head: we could rescue Veronica, or crash Betty's interview with the Blossoms while modeling the latest trend in bracelets, breaking her cover beyond hope of repair. "Same place," I decided.  
   
Walking while chained to someone is not as easy as it might seem. For one thing, the chains on the cuffs were short--when our hands were loose at our sides, we were practically stepping on each other's toes, but when we walked within an easy distance of each other, our arms ended up stretched awkwardly out like we were trying to take flight. For another thing, the chains jingled at every step, and neither of us had figured out a very good way to silence them.  
   
For a third thing, Archie's stride was so long that I had to take three steps for every two of his, which led to some interesting contortions of the chain.  
   
We paused outside Cheryl's window. "Should we climb in?" Archie whispered.  
   
I shook my head. "Listen first. If Cheryl's still in there, then we need to wait."  
   
"I hear Reggie," Archie muttered. I listened a little harder: sure enough, there he was. I estimated him in the next room over from the bedroom, with a raised voice that was just on the verge of exploding into a yell.  
   
Before I could suggest caution, Archie had clambered up on the windowsill, dragging my hand with him. "Veronica Lodge?" he whisper-yelled through the window.  
   
"Too loud!" I hissed, hoisting myself up.  
   
"I'm Archie Andrews; we kissed a couple times? I've got Jughead Jones handcuffed to me. Anyway, we're here to rescue you." Veronica's face appeared at the casement, and a sudden, blindingly sharp pang of relief washed over me. After everything that had happened, she was safe. It was going to be okay.  
   
She pulled the window open. "Jug? What's going on?"  
   
"No time to explain, but we have to get out of here," I insisted urgently. "Come on, V."  
   
Veronica just looked confused. "Sorry, what?"  
   
"Cheryl's holding you hostage over the Cooper case, this isn't some girls' weekend, you have to--"  
   
"I don't have to do anything I don't want to do, Jughead," Veronica retorted. "I appreciate the thought, but--oh my god,  _get out_ , unless you want to get scarred for life!"  
   
"What?" said Archie. "I don't--"  
   
"Listen!" Veronica breathed. High heels. They were coming down the hallway, and their owner was _very_ angry.  
   
Before I even had time to take a breath, Veronica had bodyslammed Archie and I into the closet and closed the door on us.  
   
"So," Cheryl purred maliciously from the doorway, "Guess what my minion told me today?"  
   
"You know I'm not interested in the sordid goings-on of the mafioso, Cheryl," Veronica murmured with audible disdain.  
   
There was a fluffy thud: Cheryl had probably sat down on the bed. "Oh, but you're going to want to hear this. Dear Reggie found two of your friends sneaking around Thornhill today."  
   
Veronica gave a thick, choked gasp that was possibly a little overplayed. " _Amada_ \--"  
   
"Do you want me to kill them?" Cheryl inquired languidly. "I'm not sure, myself. Yet."  
   
"Cheryl, you're a good person, you can do better," Veronica begged, emotion throbbing in every jagged syllable. "We've talked about this, remember? I'm still here."  
   
"I want to be strong," Cheryl said slowly, and her voice was lilting, tragic, almost child-like.  
   
"You are strong," Veronica pleaded lowly. "We are strong."  
   
"Jason was weak," Cheryl murmured. "Even you don't know how weak he really was. Only the Blossoms know. It's the curse of the Blossom men."  
   
"What are you saying?" Veronica entreated. "Cheryl, what's going on?"  
   
"He was weak, and he died," Cheryl intoned, and she sounded half-dead herself. "I thought I was strong, but you make me weak, Veronica. You're my fatal flaw." The words hung there in the air for a moment, shivering, before Cheryl added casually, "And, by the way, you're a goddamn liar. I know they're in the closet."  
   
"What are you going to do about it?" Veronica asked, and it was fairly clear that she didn't mean us. Archie started fumbling with his free hand for something at the bottom of the closet.  
   
"When I inherit, everything's going to change…" Cheryl began.  
   
Veronica stopped her. "No. That's not good enough. What are you going to do _now_?" The something was a long, thin knife, which Archie was trying to jiggle in the lock on the handcuffs.  
   
A long moment passed, and then Cheryl spoke resolutely. "I'm not letting them take you away. You act like you care about me--"  
   
"I _do_ care about you," Veronica amended, taking the sort of deep breath you catch before you dive underwater. "Which is why I'm asking you to leave with me."  
   
To this day, I'll never know what Cheryl would have said next, because Archie's hand shook on the knife, cutting a long, jagged swipe across my arm. I let out an involuntary grunt of pain.  
   
Immediately, Veronica tore open the closet door. "Save your recriminations for later, _jarabe_ , and get me bandages!" she yelled, dropping to her knees and deftly picking the lock on our cuffs. Archie ripped off his jacket and started tearing the sleeves from the body.  
   
"Get me a clothes hanger or something!" he ordered.  
   
"What the hell for?" Veronica asked.  
   
"A tourniquet!" Archie replied, as though it was the most obvious thing in the world. He handed me the rest of the jacket. "Put pressure on it, Jug."  
   
"It's just a scratch, guys," I pointed out.  
   
"It's a deep scratch," Veronica retorted. "Pressure, now. No tourniquet, Archie, he's not a hemophiliac…" I didn't catch the rest. My mind fixated on that word and wouldn't let it go. I was staring at the bloodstain that was slowly spreading across Archie's jacket.  
   
Sometimes, solving a case, there are moments where you find one piece of evidence--maybe a bloodstain in an interesting place, perhaps a guilty look or glance, or even (if you're _very_ lucky) a smoking gun--and then everything comes together naturally like the ending of a perfect solitaire hand. But then there are the other times, where figuring something out is like sitting with your ear to a safe, listening and waiting for each tumbler to click. The tumblers are there all along, but they're only useful once they've fallen into place.  
   
Archie's jacket was torn at the sleeves, and there was a bloodstain on the body, but no knife or gunshot wound.  
   
The tumblers were: _tourniquet, swim team, three to fifteen minutes, weak, the curse of the Blossom men,_ and _a small bloodstain on the inside of Hal Cooper's wardrobe._  
   
The combination to open the safe was: _hemophiliac_.  
   
Cheryl reentered the room, bearing bandages. "Hold your arm out before I decide to widen the cut with a rusty nail," she declared. She was practically oozing hostility, and the smart thing to do would have been to shut up and do as I was told  
   
But I didn't. I held her gaze and asked resolutely, "Cheryl, was Jason a hemophiliac?"  
   
Her mouth fell open about a centimeter or so, then shut itself.  
   
"I don't know."  
   
"You wanted me to find Jason. I need to know the answer to this question in order to find him," I insisted.  
   
She stared at me, her eyes wide and almost unseeing. Veronica inched a hand up to her shoulder and began rubbing there. Cheryl swallowed and hardened up her face. "Yes. Jason had hemophilia. It was mild, though." There was a solemn, grave air of tragedy to her.  
   
I took a deep breath and prayed that I was right.

"Then he's alive, and I know where to find him."  
 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't hate me, please! It's going to make sense at the end! (I hope...)
> 
> Amada = beloved and jarabe = syrup if Google Translate is to be believed!


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cheronica, the Blossoms, a tense confrontation or two, and lots of death threats.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys! Sorry for the long wait...real life intervened, in the form of a brutal essay. Updates should be quicker from here on out! 
> 
> The ratings change isn't to adjust for future material (as much as I know a lot of you would like that lol)...it's more because I realized that murder mysteries are probably at least a T by default!
> 
> The other thing I wanted to mention is that it looks like we've only got maybe two or three chapters left in this AU. I will definitely miss writing Chiaroscuro! It may be my absolute favorite fic I've ever written, and I'll probably come back to this AU, especially if there's an adaptable plot line in S2. Not sure what I'll write next, but I'll keep you posted! 
> 
> I'm thinking about West Side Story, and also The Princess Bride...

"Wait, if Jason's alive, then where is he? How do you know?" said Archie. "I'm sorry, am I the only person confused here?"  
  
Veronica hoisted her legs up onto the bed and cuddled a little further into Cheryl's side. "Nope, I'm lost too. Your methods, Sherlock. Go."  
  
"Last night," I began, "Betty and I searched her parents' house--"  
  
" _Swoon!_ " Veronica declared. I shot her a look. "Sorry," she smirked, reaching for a bowl of chocolate-covered cherries on the bedside table.  
  
"We found Jason's jacket there," I continued. "It had the sleeves torn off, it was soaked through with blood, and there was a small stain on the inside of the drawer where we found it." Cheryl's fingers sank deeply into Veronica's hair and tangled themselves there. "We incorrectly assumed that the person who had the jacket had murdered Jason or witnessed the murder, based on the blood patterns. But Jason had hemophilia, so the blood would have stayed wet longer. How long, Cheryl?"  
  
Cheryl stirred as if waking from a dream. "An hour, maybe more," she murmured numbly. Veronica's fingers rubbed little circles in the bare skin of Cheryl's arm, as the goosebumps that lined her skin slowly receded. Cheryl's grip on Veronica's hair tightened, then relaxed. I cleared my throat a little and turned back to Archie.  
  
"Okay. An hour. Anyway, that's more than enough time for what I'm thinking of. He couldn't have lost more than two pints, judging by the jacket."  
  
"I don't follow," Veronica commented.  
  
"Two pints isn't enough to kill someone," I explained. "You'd have to lose three or four, and Jason would have known that."  
  
"So what'd he do?" said Archie.  
  
I grabbed his arm and pinched at it hard. "Okay, Archie, say someone shoots you in the arm, right about there. You're in pain, but you have a couple minutes before the blood loss makes you woozy. What's the first thing you do?"  
  
"Put pressure on it," Archie supplied automatically. "You have to stop the bleeding as soon as possible."  
  
"But your blood's slow to clot," I pointed out. "So applying pressure isn't going to be enough. For the purposes of our experiment, let's say you're a bit of a walk from civilization, maybe somewhere near that getaway car we found. You can get help, but first you've got to get the immediate danger out of the way."  
  
"Okay," said Archie. "Then, yeah, I'd want to tie a tourniquet."  
  
"How would you do it?" I asked, for the sake of my audience.  
  
"I'd rip the sleeves off my shirt and tie them together in a loop. I'd probably have to use my teeth if my arm was out of commission," Archie explained. "Then I'd hunt around for a strong stick, put it in the loop, and twist."  
  
"It's risky," I added, "but it's better to lose the arm than die."  
  
Veronica's mouth had opened in a soundless "O" of understanding. "You're saying that the condition of Jason's jacket indicates that he was attacked, but survived."  
  
"He'd still be worried about bleeding out, though," Archie reasoned. "So he'd try to keep pressure on it with the rest of the jacket while he went for help."  
  
"Okay, so we need to ask around at all the nearby hospitals," Veronica surmised.  
  
"You're all wrong," Cheryl insisted, her voice shaking. "You don't understand. My family has contacts in the hospital inspection industry. We've been keeping tabs on every hospital in the area for anyone who remotely matches his description. If he got help, we'd know."  
  
"What if I told you that there was a completely unregulated hospital within walking distance of Jason's last known location?" It was the truth, and she deserved that.  
  
Cheryl scoffed. "I don't believe you. No hospital is unregulated--"  
  
"Religious exemption from inspection."  
  
Cheryl's eyes widened a little as she turned away, her shoulders trembling. "Well, that would do it," Veronica mused lightly.  
  
"I still don't believe you," Cheryl repeated, pressing the heels of her hands up against her eyes. "I can't believe you."  
  
"It's okay to hope, C," Veronica murmured.  
  
"I'll believe it when I see him. I'm sorry, I can't--I can't get my hopes up like this. I just can't." Her lips shook a little.  
  
Archie was still staring at his jacket. "But--wait a second, how did the person who had the jacket get it, then?"  
  
I pivoted to address him. "Okay, imagine you're Jason. You're trying to run away from your family. You've just been shot at, let's assume you don't know who did it or why. And your only possibility for refuge is--"  
  
"--The Sisters of Quiet Mercy," Archie finished.  
  
"Where, if I'm reading this right, Polly Cooper was living, probably talking nonstop about her beloved Jason," Veronica summarized. "Not to mention, she'd probably just escaped. So he'd ditch the jacket and check in under a false name."  
  
"We need to go there, then," Archie decided. "So we need to get Betty out of the interview. How?"  
  
Everyone spontaneously turned to me. "What is it?" I said.  
  
Veronica pulled her head off Cheryl's shoulder and fixed me with an amused look. "Well, I'm being held hostage, Archie's not going to be any help, and Cheryl probably shouldn't cross her parents just yet. So it's on you to get her out. Plus, you're the brains of this operation anyhow."  
  
"Which makes me?" Cheryl interrupted, sounding somehow both indignant and numb.  
  
Veronica grinned: probably she was just happy to distract Cheryl for a moment. I didn't blame her. "Archie's the muscle, I'm the damsel in distress, and you're clearly the sexy-yet-dangerous eye candy.”

Cheryl’s lips twitched into a smile, then thinned out a little. "Ha. Anyway, they're probably in the second sitting room. There's an adjoining door in the kitchens that--"

She was interrupted by a loud, splintering crash from the next room. It was followed, after a moment, by a dull, fleshy thud like an afterthought. "What was that?" Archie asked, getting to his feet.

Cheryl waved a hand dismissively. "Probably just my minion, playing with his food as usual. As I was saying--"

Archie’s eyebrows leaped up anxiously. "Wait, do you mean Reggie? He’s outside your room?" He turned to me, gesticulating desperately. "Jug, we told Ethel to tail Cheryl! Reggie’s probably eating her alive right now!"

"Call him off," I ordered Cheryl. "Now."

"And risk word getting out that the Queen Bee of Thornhill is going soft?" Cheryl demanded.

Veronica rolled her eyes. "You two keep on arguing. I’ll go deal with it," she announced, sliding off the bed, tousling her hair, pinching her cheeks and lips, and slipping a purple morning robe over her dress.

Archie turned bright red and looked away. "Um, why are you--"

"Don’t ask," Cheryl muttered tersely. "You won’t like the answer."

Veronica turned around about a foot from the door. "Really, Archiekins? Are you embarrassed? It’s not like there’s anything under this you haven’t already seen."

Cheryl stiffened up. "You didn’t mention that, Ronnie," she observed airily.

"Jealousy is not a good look on you, _jarabe_ ," Veronica retorted, opening the door and poking her head through. "Mr. Mantle?" she asked sweetly. On the other side of the door, she was probably batting her eyes or something, looking like a spellbindingly innocent (and probably, in Reggie’s eyes, an extremely sexy) hostage. The usual undertones of Hollywood-style sultriness in her voice were dialed up until they practically blared. "Can I get a glass of wat--oh, hi, Ethel." Her voice dropped back to normal. "Is he unconscious?"

"Yep," said Ethel proudly, panting a little from the fight. "I might need help hiding him, though."

I shouldered past Archie into the next room, where Ethel and Veronica were contemplating the prone figure of Reggie Mantle. "Find somewhere to stuff him," I suggested. "Cheryl's closet fit me and Archie."

"Ideas aren't the problem," Veronica informed me. "We just need help lifting him. Archiekins, could you lend me a shoulder over here?" she called imperiously. "Cheryl, go help Jughead get Betty out of the meeting."

"Are you ordering me around?" Cheryl inquired, her voice taking on a dangerous edge.

Veronica whirled to face her. "I don't know. Am I?" Their gazes held for a moment, and then Veronica's smirk widened suddenly into a grin as she strode--no, ran--over to Cheryl, laughter echoing behind her. "Your brother's _alive_ ," she proclaimed, her eyes sparkling gleefully. "I mean, it just hit me right now. He's _alive_ , Cheryl, I can hardly believe it!"

"I can't believe it either," Cheryl said, sounding far-away.

On the carpet, Archie and Ethel had given up on getting Reggie into a bridal carry. At the moment, Archie had crouched down, while Ethel was trying to drape Reggie into a piggyback position on his shoulders.

"Be happy," Veronica suggested, her tone carrying a pleading note that I wasn't used to. "You've been so sad, and I understand, I do. But I'm telling you, if I could have my mother back right now, or even if I could just know she was alive, I wouldn't act worried like you are."

"Someone tried to kill him," Cheryl said, her brow furrowed. "Someone who I know--tried to kill my brother."

"But they didn't succeed," Veronica reminded her.

Archie, now with the added weight of Reggie on his shoulders, struggled to his feet. He balanced for a moment, nearly toppled, was caught by Ethel before he hit the ground, righted himself, and started staggering gingerly over to the door.

Cheryl swallowed, hoisting her chin impossibly high. "Yes. They didn't succeed, which means that you're in danger."

Veronica tensed instantly, her tiny form coiling up to strike. "Are you going to push me away, now?" she hissed. "Because if you push me away one more time, _cereza_ , I'm not coming back. And I seem to remember winnng our most recent catfight."

Cheryl reached out and laid her hands carefully on Veronica's shoulders. "I'm not pushing you away, V. I'm done with that."

"About time," Veronica muttered in a sarcastic undertone. Archie dropped Reggie with a thud, just a foot from the door.

"Should we just drag him by the shoulders?" Ethel asked, scrutinizing Archie's outsized musculature dubiously. "If you're having trouble, I don't think anyone could carry him."

"Nah," said Archie. "Can't leave any evidence."

"But--" Ethel began. Then she thought better of trying to make Archie see reason, bent over, and started tugging Reggie's shoulders up again.

Cheryl cleared her throat imperiously. "I said, I'm not pushing you away. But if someone went after Jason, chances are that they also want to hurt me. They know I can take care of myself, so they'll--"

"I can take care of myself too!" Veronica insisted, shaking Cheryl's hands off her shoulders. "Not everyone can be a world-class assassin, but I do have enough skill with self-defense to stay alive. Did I mention, _I won our last fight?_ "

"Oh, please," Cheryl began, rolling her eyes. "You were on the defensive the whole time, V. And then we pulled guns on each other simultaneously. How does that equate to you winning again?" Sensing that she wasn't making any progress, she switched tactics. "Listen, I need you to stay here when we go look for Jason. You'll be safer, and I'll feel better knowing where you are."

"How do we get him in the closet?" Archie mused from the bedroom. "What do you think, Ethel? Should we try to stand him up, or is it better to have him lying down? Will he fit lying down? Does he need a pillow?"

The closet door slammed, presumably on the hastily arranged form of Reggie Mantle. Ethel had no reason whatsoever to give a damn about his comfort.

"No way in hell," Veronica insisted. "You'll have to knock me out and tie me up."

The minuscule lines around Cheryl's eyes tightened. "Veronica, what am I supposed to say to my parents when they ask why I'm taking my hostage out of the grounds?"

"I can stage an escape attempt," Veronica offered.

"You couldn't escape. I'd find you."

"That's kind of the point."

"They know I'd find you."

"Nice to see everyone has such faith in my abilities," Veronica muttered. "You're not going to leave unless I agree to stay here and wait for you, are you? Even if I said I wanted to meet the famous Jason I've heard so much about?"

"Nope," Cheryl said, smiling with just a touch of self-satisfaction. "Although if you want me to knock you out and tie you up," she murmured, "that can be arranged."

Archie, coming out of the bedroom, flushed bright red and started scuffing at the floor with his boot.

"Stop that, Archiekins," Veronica said crossly. "Will it make things easier for you if I stay, Cheryl?" she asked softly. Even though she was clearly frustrated at being left behind, something in her voice was so goddamn happy that it almost hurt to listen to her.

"Yes," Cheryl said. They shared the sort of long, meaningful look that makes perfect sense to the people sharing it and is as good as gibberish to anyone else.

"Okay," said Veronica. Her lips found Cheryl's in a kiss that definitely wasn't meant for an audience. I looked away and tried to focus on coming up with an extraction plan for Betty. Unsurprisingly, I had nothing.

"Ethel, take Archiekins and wait in the car," Veronica dictated after a moment. "I'll be right here when you get back, _cereza_. _Te amo_." Their lips met again.

" _Te amo_ ," Cheryl whispered after they parted. Then she turned on her heel and walked away. "Come on, Jones. Time and Jason stop for no one."

I lingered a moment. "You're okay, Ron? You're happy?"

She smiled, almost dreamily. "Until the next time she tries to kill me, yeah. Don't keep her waiting, Jughead. She hates that, and I want you two to get along well." I raised an eyebrow, and she burst into sputtering laughter. "Stop looking at me like that, Jug! It's not the end of the world if you have a friend who's a Blossom."

I decided not to make a clever retort about the likelihood of Cheryl Blossom and I becoming friends, and hurried off.

Cheryl was waiting for me at the end of the hall, holding an outsized candelabra and tapping her foot impatiently. "Are you done catching up yet? Unless you'd rather this take all day, that is."

I fell into step. "I feel like I should mention that--"

"If I hurt her, you'll kill me?" She laughed cynically. "You couldn't, but I appreciate the gesture."

I changed the subject before I started telling Cheryl that I hadn't seen Veronica this in love since the first time they met. "Where are we headed?"

"The servant's door to the second sitting room," she responded without breaking her stride. "It isn't near a mealtime, so the kitchens will be empty. The door has a peephole, and it's thin enough to eavesdrop. When the time is right, I'll cause a distraction so that you can grab Betty."

"Okay," I said. Cheryl looked at me dubiously.

"Okay? Really? Nothing to add at all? I expected more aimless chatter," she sniffed.

"I don't see the point," I explained briefly, striding just a little faster. "But if you want to talk, could you give me the layout of the house?"

She paused in front of the massive staircase with a hand on her hips. "Don't make this about me wanting to talk, Jones. I see through you." I regarded her appealingly, and she cracked. "Fine. This is the residential floor. Everything to our right is out of bounds; everything to our left is where Veronica, Polly and I live."

"Out of bounds?"

Cheryl shrugged a little. "My parents' domain. Trust me, it's nothing interesting, just their bedroom, a spare room, two baths, their library, my father's office, and my mother's boudoir. It's called that because it's not shown to the public on the architectural tours, on account of the curse."

"You run architectural tours of your cursed, gothic home," I deadpanned.

She smiled. "The tracery on the ribbed buttresses is exquisite. Every Tuesday, ten cents a head. Anyway, third floor is the recreation area: tennis court, projector room, massage room, exercise room, art museum, game room, and stairs to the greenhouses and the stables. My grandmother lives on that floor. Fourth floor is the servants' quarters and the in-home chapel, and first floor is the kitchens, dining room, library, and reception area."

I took a moment to try and wrap my head around the sheer amount of space the Blossoms occupied, but I had to give up. It was a lost cause. "Wow," I said, trying not to stare at the woodwork on the ceilings.

"Are you going to stop aimlessly gawping, or should we just stand here all day while my brother rots in a hospital?" Cheryl queried crossly. I hurried to catch up. At the bottom of the staircase, she led me down a hallway that twisted, turned, narrowed, and finally petered out into a dead end.

I examined it skeptically. "Um, is this a trap or something?"

Cheryl's lips quirked in silent amusement. "If this was a trap, I'd be upstairs right now, giving Ronnie my condolences for your untimely demise. This is just the entrance to the servant's hallways."

That sounded about right, I decided. Only at Thornhill would the servants come and go by way of secret passage. Cheryl pressed lightly on a seam in the wall to reveal a narrow, musty-smelling corridor. "In you go," she said, pushing me. "Down this hallway, two rights and a left should take you to the common area, and then the second sitting room is the fourth door on the left side. Watch out for Smithers; he's the only one around there this time of day."

"Is Smithers--" I began.

"The same Smithers who used to be Hermione Lodge's butler?" she supplied. "Now he's ours. Finders keepers."

"Is Veronica okay with that?" I asked.

Cheryl pursed her lips. "As okay as she is with any of this. She knows my parents ruined her life, so she's probably just biding her time until she can take them down."

"And?"

"Frankly, I don't give a damn. She's too soft to actually kill them, and they could stand to be taken down a peg or two." After a moment, she added fondly, "She and Smithers had a tearful reunion, though. Or at least what passes for tearful by his standards. I think he said, 'Miss Veronica, I am glad to see you alive and well. Cream or sugar?'"

Cheryl's Smithers imitation was spot-on, from what I could remember of the man. "Two rights and a left, fourth door on the left?" I confirmed. Cheryl nodded, handed me her candelabra, and closed the door.

"Try not to get lost," she called. "It's hard to find bodies in here."

I held the candles in front of me as I walked, cursing the crazy-rich-people logic that caused the Blossoms to forego installing electricity in their secret servant crawl spaces.

Luckily, I made it to the second sitting room door without running into anyone, getting lost, tripping and extinguishing my candles, or going insane from the isolation. Putting the candelabra down, I pressed myself up against the door and squinted at the peephole. From where I was, I could see the back of the Blossoms' heads, and no more. Betty, on the other end of the room, was scribbling notes with eager yet professional avidity.

"So that was the last time you saw your son?" she asked, with a mildly sympathetic gaze.

"Yes," said Mrs. Blossom. She sounded like Lady Macbeth, but with even less of the milk of human kindness in her. "We've been over this already, Miss McDermott."

"I'm just trying to get the human angle for my retrospective on the accident," Betty explained placidly. "Personal details help."

Clifford Blossom shifted in his chair. "But you've agreed not to print that we had a disagreement with our son, so why do you want the details?" He sounded like he was reading his opinions off of a script.

"What else can we do for you, Miss McDermott?" Penelope Blossom continued, ignoring her husband.

Betty fumbled convincingly with her notepad, adjusting her glasses on her nose. "I was hoping that I could get some insights as to how your family is moving forward from your loss?"

"We're coming together," said Clifford tersely. "A united front."

"Mrs. Blossom?" said Betty.

"Well, Jason's fiancée has moved in with us, and she's due to give birth in a few months," Penelope informed her smilingly.

Betty fought a losing battle against her own tells. Her neck tensed instantly, her breathing evened out to a measured, robotic pace, and her fingers twitched as if she wanted to curl her hands up into fists. But her face stayed measured, and her voice was detached as she replied, "Is that so? Is there any chance I could get an interview?"

Clifford moved to speak, but I didn't hear his reply. Measured footsteps were advancing through the common room behind me. Snatching up the candelabra, I ducked through the nearest side passage and pulled the door mostly shut behind me.

"Mrs. Blossom, I have the mail for you and Mr. Blossom here," said a dimly familiar voice that must have been Smithers.

"Thank you, Smithers," said Penelope, her voice clear through the open sitting room door. "I'll go through it later. That will be all."

"Would your guest like tea, ma'am?" Smithers inquired.

"That will be all, Smithers," Clifford repeated frostily. The door closed, and the footsteps departed. I crept back to the door.

"I imagine that your daughter must have been a great help to you during this trying time," Betty was saying carefully. "Would you like to elaborate on that?"

Clifford cleared his throat gruffly. "Cheryl is...capable. In some ways, more capable than her brother. She's extremely reliable, and I look forward to involving her more closely in the management of the family business."

"Mmmm," said Betty, turning a page in her notebook. "Anything to add, Mrs. Blossom?"

"Cheryl will never be Jason, though," Penelope insisted, more to her husband than to Betty. "Nobody will ever fill his place effectively. Now, is there anything else we can do for you, Miss McDermott?"

"I don't think so," Betty said, standing up. "Thank you for your--"

"Perhaps," Penelope said sweetly, "you'd like to see your sister."

Betty's face turned white. "I'm sorry, I'm an only child," she began.

"I asked," Penelope repeated menacingly, crossing the floor and grabbing Betty's wrist, "whether you'd like to see your sister, Miss Cooper. You've made a grave mistake coming here."

"I don't think I've made any mistakes," Betty said, sticking her chin up bravely and trying to twist her arm away from Penelope. "My name is Marcy McDermott, and I'm a reporter for the _Riverdale Herald_. You are harassing a member of the press, ma'am. Please let me go."

"Your name is Betty Cooper," Clifford Blossom insisted, "and you came here to find your sister. You look just like her, you know. And Polly recognized you the moment you came in. She was watching from the banisters, you know. She's resting now, but she wanted to see you. You can see her, if you want."

In an instant, Betty's determination crumbled, or so it seemed. But I recognized the tiny spark of rebellion in her eyes from her dealings with Alice Cooper. She was only faking her defeat. There was nothing I could do for her: at least, nothing that would help. If I walked in, the Blossoms would know that something was up, so she was going to have to bluff her way out of this on her own. "Fine. Let me go, and I'll tell you everything," Betty pleaded.

It wasn't the opening gambit I had expected, but it did the trick: Penelope released her wrist and sat back down. "Tell us the truth, then," she ordered bluntly. "Now."  
   
Betty took a deep breath and rubbed at her arm, taking care to hide the surface of her palms. "Yes. I'm Betty Cooper. But I'm not here for my sister. Polly made her bed, and she can lie in it." She told the lie with a little grimace, like she was downing a shot of alcohol and hiding the fact that it burned her throat. "I'm here for the _Riverdale Herald_ , investigating the events surrounding your son's death. It's my first assignment and I want to do a good job."  
   
"Isn't that a conflict of interest, seeing as your sister is so heavily involved?" Penelope questioned.  
   
Betty flinched a little, but soldiered forward. The Blossoms were unacquainted with her tells, so they probably hadn't noticed. At least, I hoped they hadn't noticed. "Most of the article is focusing on the mechanical errors in the boat that must have occurred, to drown your son at a time when Sweetwater River's depth and current speed had reached historic lows."  
   
Clifford Blossom's profile was blocking my view of Betty at the moment, but judging by the veins throbbing through his temples, Betty had just hit a chink in his armor. His lips curled in a sneer of rage as he crossed the room. "Listen, Miss Cooper. You came into our home and lied to us. Do you expect us to let that slide easily?" His tone pulsated with the promise of violence, and my heartbeat thrummed. _Da-dum, Da-dum_ , it said. _Beware. Beware. Beware._  
   
"No," said Betty, with a quiet confidence. "I don't. But I told people where I am, and if I don't come back, they'll call the police. It'd be a crippling blow for your company, wouldn't it, if your family was under investigation in yet another death? Bad for stock prices."  
   
"You little bitch," Clifford Blossom snarled. "What the hell do you think you know?"  
   
Betty regarded him coolly. "What makes you think I know anything?"  
   
"Clifford," Penelope Blossom warned.  
   
"Shut up," he growled. "Listen here, Miss Cooper--"  
   
There was an insistent banging on the outside door. "Go away!" Penelope yelled.  
   
"Mother, Father, I need your help!" Cheryl called. "Nana Rose is doddering again, and I think she's knocked a chair onto my bodyguard."  
   
The Blossoms cast each other exasperated glances. "I'll go handle it," said Clifford, getting up.  
   
"I need both of you," Cheryl insisted. "Can the reporter wait?"  
   
"Whyever do you need both of us?" Mrs. Blossom yelled.  
   
Cheryl's head poked through the door. "Because, Mother, it's going to take at least three people to calm down Nana, the way she's going on. She won't stop talking about Jason, poor dear, she thinks he was murdered."  
   
"I can wait," Betty volunteered. "Anyway, I think we're nearly done here. Though I would _love_ to interview Nana sometime--"  
   
The Blossoms visibly stiffened in unison. "That won't be happening," Clifford bit out. "You'll be hearing from us, Miss Cooper."  
   
"I look forward to it," Betty said, her eyes flashing with the assurance of victory. The Blossoms swept from the room, Penelope first and Clifford following.  
   
The instant the hall door closed, I shoved my door open. "Betts!"  
   
"Juggie! What's going on?"  
   
I stopped in front of her, breathing hard for no apparent reason. "We have to get out of here. Polly was right, the whole time. Jason's alive."  
   
Her face froze in bewilderment. "Jason's alive--I don't--"  
   
"Please, trust me," I said, holding her eyes with mine. "I'll explain. We have to go."  
   
She appraised me with one swift glance, then nodded. "Okay. Let's go."  
   
We crept out of the sitting room, pausing only to hear that the Blossoms were well up the staircase before we turned to make our way out of the house. I got lost in the first few minutes, but Betty's sense of direction held firm. She led the way through the halls, her head held high. The instant we crossed the front threshold, we started running, pelting down the driveway. Betty was ahead of me, her legs pounding the pavement, scattering hairpins from her bun behind her. I'm not a graceful runner, so I flailed a little in her wake. In my defense, the driveway was steep.  
   
Archie was waiting in the driver's seat of my car. "Ethel took Cheryl's keys, so she'll bring her once she gets out," he explained. "C'mon, get in!"  
   
We slid inside the car, drinking gulps of air in greedily, laughing with the sheer thrill of having, once again, saved ourselves. "You know where the Sisters of Quiet Mercy is?" I asked Archie.  
   
"It's in Eversgreen Forest, right? Over by the getaway car?"  
   
"Near enough," Betty said. "Why?"

"That's where Jason is," I said, and explained my reasoning to her, with Archie interjecting random details. She listened, asked clarifying questions, and nodded thoughtfully when I finished. Then she grimaced, squeezed her eyes shut, and pressed her head back against the seat. "Headache?" I asked.

"Migraine. This is insane. My life is insane. Did I just piss off both the heads of a mob family?" she groaned disbelievingly.

"It's starting to sink in, huh?" I said sympathetically. "You did a good job of it, too. The point about river depth was inspired."

"Stop. Just stop," she moaned. "They're going to hunt me down and kill me now, aren't they?"

"I doubt it," I rationalized. "They don't know you ran away from home yet. They aren't dumb enough to try a middle-class murder in plain sight, Betts. Only poor kids and runaways slip through the cracks like that."

"Comforting," Betty said dryly. After a moment, she added, "Jason had hemophilia."

"Yes," I said, unsure where this was going.

"So anyone could have attacked him. Not just my parents." She said it like it was merely a step in a complicated math problem.

"Yes," I said. "All we know is that less than an hour after he dropped the jacket, your dad found it."

"I ran away from home for no reason, then," she finished.

"Maybe," I said, thinking of Jellybean, how I'd wrapped her up in blankets and carried her piggyback until the morning light woke her, how she rubbed her eyes drowsily as I told her we'd run away, _it's going to be an adventure, Jelly, won't that be fun?_ And the funny, bewildered, lost look in her eyes as she blinked, took it all in, and asked, _Why?_

"I'll go back," she determined, more to herself than to me. "After this is over, I'll explain the whole thing."

"Okay," I said, my throat suddenly dry and burning. It was the first time in a long time that she'd talked about what would come next, and in the intervening stretch of time, I'd managed to convince myself that she was a street kid like me.

"Um, Jug?" said Archie from the driver's seat. I'd been so focused on Betty that I'd forgotten he was there. "There's a car outside your office."

I squinted at it. It was a four-door shoebox Ford, one of three dozen identical cars in Riverdale alone. "That's my mom's," Betty declared immediately.

I decided not to question her. "I'll go see what she wants," I volunteered. I still had questions for Alice Cooper, anyway. "Park around the block?"

Beside me, Betty was worrying her lip. "If she asks where I am--" she began, then trailed off.

"I'll say you're coming back soon," I promised. She nodded abstractedly and chewed at her lip some more.

Archie parked the car. "I stole your gun back off Reggie," he announced, pulling it out of the glovebox and handing it to me. "Figured you'd want it back."

That had to rank as one of the most thoughtful things anyone had ever done for me (excluding acts of kindness performed by Betty, since otherwise, she'd probably fill the list up all by herself). "Thanks, Arch," I said, hefting it experimentally and fiddling with the trigger a little. Then I stuffed it in my pocket, flashed Betty a thumbs-up that I didn't quite feel, and set off around the corner.

She'd left the front door ajar to signal her presence, which was thoughtful of her. I shut it behind me and pulled open the door into my office.

Alice Cooper was sitting on my upholstered stool with her back to the door, her posture a perfect mirror of her daughter's. Her eyes, however, were going to be well above mine by the time I sat down. As I closed the inner door behind me, she stood up, turned around, and raked me over with her gaze, all in one fluid motion. "Mr. Chisholm," she greeted, rather pointedly.

I headed over to my desk and sat down before I responded. "I'm afraid you have the wrong man, ma'am," I insisted faux-seriously. "My name is Jones. Jughead Jones. Adam Chisholm is my evil twin."

Betty would have snorted at that, or maybe even guffawed. Alice merely sniffed once, dryly and near-humorlessly, as she perched herself on the stool once more. "Really?" she inquired, her eyebrows arching themselves upward to within an inch of their lives. "This is your evil twin?" She pulled a newspaper clipping out of her purse, leaned forward, and slid it across the desk to me. It was a Register article from two years back, headlined " _Riverdale Herald Hires Out-Of-State: New Blood, Or A Betrayal Of Trust?_ ". In the picture up top, a lanky young man with a thin face smiled anemically at the camera.

"Okay, fine," I said. "I was on a case, and I borrowed his identity. That's all."

Alice Cooper leaned smoothly forward, her nostrils flaring out as if she scented blood. "And what was the case?"

"Telling you would be a violation of investigator-client privilege," I insisted.

"Fine. Next question. Where the hell is my daughter?" she growled.

"Betty will come home when all this is over," I explained peaceably. "My turn. How do you know my father?" I wasn't asking because I thought she'd tell me; I was asking because I wanted to get a handle on her tells.

"I don't know your father," she equivocated. She had my same trick for lying that my father had taught me: keep it vague, and leave room to fill in a truth at the end. In her head, she was probably thinking something like, "I don't know your father... _'s current home address._ " The sentence structure was unmistakable. She could have said, "I've never met your father," or "I have no idea what you're talking about," but she didn't.

Besides, I caught her tell: tension in the neck, just like Betty. "Okay," I said. I reached for a pen and drew the Southside Serpent symbol on the back of the clipping. "This mean anything to you?" I asked, sliding it across to her.

Alice picked it up and examined it with cool detachment. "No," she said, setting it back down again. A single line of tension etched its way across her forehead.

"You're lying," I challenged. "I have a source who places you as part of the gang that originated that symbol. I dare say there's even documentation, if you look back far enough. I'm not asking you because I don't know, Mrs. Cooper. I'm asking because I want to know if you're going to tell the truth."

"That symbol has nothing to do with me," she managed. I filled in the word " _anymore_ ".

"It was found next to the burnt wreck of your daughter's getaway car." I watched carefully, but Alice showed no reaction. Her neck was static, her shoulders were steady, and her eyes focused on the wall behind me with a steely intensity. "You already knew that," I deduced.

Alice's lips thinned out. "You're putting words in my mouth," she observed tightly. "I didn't say that."

"So was it you, or your husband that put the symbol there?" I inquired casually.

That got her. It wasn't much: just a flash in her eyes, a little hiss of an inhale, and a new coil of tension in her neck. But it was enough. "You're protecting him," I said. It wasn't a question this time.

Her eyes flicked down from the wall and locked on mine. "You don't know what you're talking about," she snapped, biting each word out like it had injured her personally.

"You're right," I admitted. "I don't. So tell me."

Alice's neck throbbed once and was still. Her chin contorted as if she was biting at the inside of her lips, and she looked down for a moment to her lap, where she had been twisting her wedding ring around her finger for quite some time. Then she met my eyes again, with something that resembled honesty. "All right," she agreed. "But on one condition." She took a breath: in through the nose, hold for a few seconds, out through the nose. "I tell Betty everything myself when all this is over. You can tell her basic facts, but no more. There's--there's some truths at the bottom of this mess that she needs to hear face-to-face." When Alice finished talking, she sat back on the stool a fraction of a inch, looking wan and at odds with herself.

 _I'm just--tired. Of people lying to me,_ Betty had said, her eyes shining sorrowfully. "I can't promise that," I asserted.

Alice didn't meet my eyes. She fiddled with her wedding ring a little harder, swallowing every few seconds and staring out my window as if she was waiting for some kind of sign. I barely noticed when she said, "I'll tell you anyway."

My pen and paper were ready to hand, but I didn't reach for them. "Thank you," I said, the words feeling clumsy on my tongue.

"I'm not doing it for you," she muttered. Then she cleared her throat, crossed her hands neatly in her lap, and looked down at my carpet. "We were going to see Polly."

"When?"

"Last Wednesday." The day after Polly's escape, I noted for future reference. "Hal was driving, and I was in the passenger, and there was a--a bundle of something in the road. I thought it was a baby, so I yelled at Hal to slam on the brakes." As far as I could tell, she wasn't lying--yet.

"It wasn't a baby, I assume?" I could picture it so clearly: Hal driving, Alice critiquing him. He was probably a cautious driver, the sort who religiously checks the speedometer to be absolutely certain that they aren't over the limit. And bundled up on the freeway, a small, bloodstained pile of blue and gold fabric.

"It was a jacket. Jason's jacket," she told me, although she probably knew I'd guessed. I could practically see the scene playing behind her eyes. "We got out of the car and went to take a look, and I knew he was somewhere near. Months-old boating accidents don't produce fresh bloodstains."

"So you went to get him help?" I guessed.

Alice snorted. "No. No, we didn't. Hal took the jacket and put it in his pocket, and we got back in the car to go to the Sisters. He wanted to show it to Poll. He thought--maybe, if she thought he was dead, she'd--come back to us," she finished, in an undertone.

"You thought he was dead?" I asked.

"Hal did," Alice said briefly, as if that explained everything. "We went in, and they told us that Polly was gone. We put things together and made an educated guess. Someone attacked them, Jason was injured or dying, and Polly..."

Alice trailed off, tastefully. "She's not dead," I blurted. "Polly. I've talked to her."

She fixed me with a mild glare. "I know that." I didn't know how she knew it, but at this point, I would have believed her if she'd said she knew my real name. "Betty wouldn't go this far for someone she barely knew," Alice added, with just enough condescending scorn to make it clear that she didn't think she needed to explain. "She was looking into Jason, which meant she was finding him for Polly."

"So you went home, and your husband put the jacket away in his wardrobe," I observed, trying to get Alice back on topic. She looked vaguely insulted at the very idea that she needed prodding through the conversation.

"Yes. Then Hal grabbed a gun and his toolbox, and we went out to look for the bodies. We started by the Sisters and swept out in the direction of the river--"

"Hold up," I directed. "Why did he bring his toolbox?"

Her lips twisted in what could have been contempt. "If we got attacked, he thought I could use the hammer in it to defend myself."

"He doesn't trust you with a gun," I inferred. It made sense from a practical perspective, but if Hal didn't trust Alice, he shouldn't have married her. Or at least, that was my opinion.

Alice nodded confirmation, and moved on. "I found the getaway car. It was hidden, but somebody had moved the branches recently, like they'd been looking for something." That had been Polly, trying to find Jason. "I called for Hal and he came. He was--angry. But also terrified that someone would find the getaway car and link it to Jason and Polly, from there to us, and then we'd be investigated for--for what happened to them."

Hal would have been terrified. They both would have been. "So he burnt it?"

Her eyes were fixed staunchly out my window, as if she was reciting her story to something impersonal, like a camera, or the two-way mirror in an interrogation room. "There was some gasoline in the toolbox, and he carries matches for his cigars. I begged him not to." She blinked and swallowed, hard. "I thought he should call the police, give them the jacket, and tell the whole truth. Then--"

Alice stopped mid-breath, as if she had to force herself to continue. Then she looked right at me, her eyes blazing in challenge. "I threatened to do it myself."

"That's why he burned the symbol into the ground, then. It was blackmail." Somehow, despite my preconceived expectations, this conversation was making me hate Alice Cooper less and Hal Cooper more.

"He used his welding torch. If I called the police, then--certain unsavory things about me would come to light," she clarified, wrinkling her nose minutely at the word "unsavory". "We got back in the car and went home, and that was the end of it."

There was only one more thing I needed to know. "Mrs. Cooper--were you together, all that morning? Was he in your sight?"

"You can just say it," Alice pointed out bitterly. "If you're going to ask me whether my husband could, logistically speaking, have killed Jason Blossom, then ask me to my face." She flung the words at me like a gauntlet or a grenade.

"Alright," I said. "Could your husband have killed Jason Blossom, logistically speaking?"

"Yes," she asserted bluntly, as if she was trying to make an exhibition out of not caring. "I didn't see him all that morning. He came home for lunch, and then we drove out to see Polly."

"Thank you, Mrs. Cooper," I said, rising from my desk.

She stood up as well and inclined her head in my direction. "Good afternoon, Mr. Jones. If my daughter dies on this crusade, you should pray that you die with her."

"I wouldn't dream of letting Betty die alone," I said, and meant it. Alice Cooper read the truth of the matter in my face. Her features softened up a little in something that could have been sympathy, and I wondered whether she'd looked like Betty when she was younger.

But if Alice had ever looked like Betty, she would have had a fierce, curving grin in the place of Betty's sunny smile. She would have been a Betty who was relentless and dangerous, whose ribs and shoulder blades always jutted out at odd angles, who couldn't afford to demand the truth at any cost.

With a final nod, Alice Cooper turned on her heel and walked away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cereza=cherry  
> Te amo=I love you  
> jarabe=syrup
> 
> Let me know what you think! I can't stress enough how much I love hearing from you guys. You're the absolute best, and also the reason that I've passed the 50K mark on this monster!


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The chapter you've all been waiting for. Literally.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so lots of stuff happening this chapter! Not much to say, except that I hope you guys enjoy, and I'll see you all soon for an epilogue that wraps up some of these loose ends! This is by far my favorite fic to write, and I will miss it, along with each and every one of you!

After Alice drove away, I left my office, locked the door, and hurried around the block to my car.

"What did she want?" Betty asked. Her lips were practically raw, I noted.

"To make me squirm a little," I replied easily. "She knows I'm not Adam Chisholm, unsurprisingly. But I asked her about the symbol, flat-out."

"And?" Archie asked, already turning the car back onto the road.

I turned to Betty jerkily, my tongue feeling leaden in my mouth. This was the second time I'd had to hand-deliver her horrible news about her family, and it was two times too many. I took a deep breath. "Betts--I'm so sorry, it was your dad. He's the one who burnt the getaway car."

The fingers of her hand jerked spasmodically on her knee. I couldn't see her eyes. "Oh," she said.

I could see it in the slump of her shoulders, in the way she let her hair fall forward around her face a little: for a glimmering moment, she'd actually believed that her family could heal. "She protected him, you know," I explained gently. "She wants to talk to you, when this is over."

"Yeah," said Betty, her voice ragged. "When this is over. Yeah." After a dull, dragging minute, she turned to me with a wry, deprecating quirk of her lips. "Hey. At least he isn't a murderer, huh?" She sounded jaded and bitter, and I was overwhelmingly reminded of Alice.

"We still don't know, Betts," I told her, drumming my fingers on my lap. "He doesn't have an alibi. But at least there's a good chance that he's not a murderer. That's more than we had before."

"It's gonna be okay, Betty," Archie chimed in from the driver's seat, twisting around to face her. "We'll figure it out. If your dad gets the death penalty, you can always move in with me."

"Not helping, Archie," I cut in.

Betty smoothed out her face and smiled. "Thanks, Archie. I appreciate that," she replied.

I shot her a look that said, _Really?_ She responded with a half-shrug: _Well, it's the thought that counts, right?_

"You're welcome," Archie said. "Seriously, I want to help, however I can. I--"

He cut off suddenly, as a branch nearly clipped the side of the car. "Watch where you're going, Archie, please?" Betty asked politely, gripping the seat leather with white knuckles. Archie whipped his head around and yanked on the wheel just in time to prevent the car from veering off the road entirely and slamming into a tree.

We kept quiet after that so as not to distract Archie from the road again, but as I watched, Betty's arm stealthily wrapped itself around her waist and hugged. Her eyes were fixed on the floor of the car, and her bloody lips were pursed. Slowly, I edged my hand across the expanse of seat between us and laid it on her knee. She darted a hesitant glance over at me, and then her eyes dropped back down to rest on my hand.

"Is this it?" asked Archie, squinting at the grey cement building that had emerged suddenly from out of the trees.

I squinted too. Freshly installed bars on the windows, a cross above the door, and a sign out front that read, _Sisters of Quiet Mercy Home For Troubled Youth._ "I don't know," I deadpanned. "Maybe it's some other completely different creepy religious hospital in the middle of the forest."

Betty snorted a little, despite herself. "Don't listen to him, Archie. This is it."

Archie turned up the driveway and parked in the roundabout in front of the building, where Cheryl and Ethel were already waiting.

"Finally!" Cheryl called as I shut the car door behind Betty. "I assume you were attacked on the road, since I can't think of any _other_ reason for you to take so long getting here."

"We've been here for five minutes already," Ethel clarified.

Cheryl shot her a wounded glance. "It felt like hours," she informed us.

Ethel shrugged. "She's been keeping busy. She went around the whole building, looking in every single ground-floor window to see if Jason was there. I think the nuns are onto us."

"Oh, please--" Cheryl began, but Betty pushed past her up the steps.

"Okay, anyone who wants to stay outside and argue can. Anybody who wants to go see Jason, get inside the building," I ordered, hurrying to pull the door open for Betty.

About two feet into the entryway, our path was blocked by a nun in a booth marked "Visitor Registration". A large sign declared that guests without a visitor badge would be caught, summarily evicted, prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law, and eternally damned, may heaven have mercy on their souls. I decided not to risk it. Leaning into the booth, I flashed the nun my most confident smile. "Five visitor badges, please?"

She peered at me over her spectacles. "Who for?"

I twisted my neck around to look at Cheryl. _I don't know!_ she mouthed. Then she thought better and strode up to the booth. "For...um..." Her eyes flashed across the list of patient names taped to the desk. "Jay Fowler." Jason Blossom, I noted idly, was bad at pseudonyms: another word for Blossom was flower, and Fowler was just a bad anagram of flower.

The nun was distinctly unimpressed by Cheryl's sudden flash of remembrance. "Are you sure?"

"Yes, I am sure," Cheryl confirmed sweetly, rummaging in her purse and 'inadvertently' displaying a large wad of cash.

"Family members only," the nun informed her wearily. "And the Lord looks down upon material pleasures and the temptations of the flesh."

Cheryl shoved her wallet back in her purse. "Let me know if you change your mind," she said, bowing her head and trying to look pious. It wasn't working.

The nun slid a pile of badges through the glass. "He's in Cell 202A. You have half an hour."

Cheryl snatched the badges and started distributing them. Then she turned back to the nun with an aggrieved expression. "There are only three badges here."

"Family members only," the nun repeated. I cast a look around the room to see if there were any Blossoms I'd missed. Archie and Ethel were clumped together behind Cheryl, and-- _oh_.

Cheryl stepped forward and insisted smoothly, "She's our half-sister," just as Archie blurted, "He dyes his hair."

The nun looked skeptical, but slid two more badges across to Cheryl. "Names?"

"Cheryl Fowler, Ethel Fowler, Archie Fowler, John Fowler, and Betty Fowler," Cheryl supplied. The nun was definitely not convinced, but she wrote it down anyway. Cheryl nodded thanks and strode down the hall as if it was a runway; Ethel followed, walking like a normal human being, and Archie, unfortunately, leaned over to talk to the nun.

"Sorry about my siblings," he began, with an ingratiating grin. "The reason there's so many of them is that my old man, back in high school, he couldn't decide which girl he was going to go steady with--"

Betty and I grabbed him by the arm and yanked him away before he could do any more damage. "Do I know you, young lady?" the nun called after her.

"You don't," Betty yelled, breaking into a run the instant she turned the corner. "You really don't!"

We caught up to Ethel and Cheryl, who started running too.The five of us dashed up a flight of stairs, skidded down a hallway, and found ourselves facing a door marked "202A".

"Well, here we are," Betty said.

To us, it seemed almost unthinkable that all the mysteries, lies, questions, shootings, and kidnappings had led up to this instant. It was a profoundly stirring anticlimax. We all stared at the door for a moment, each reluctant to be the one to open it.

"Um, should we go in soon?" said Archie, jerking his head awkwardly at the door. There was a scuffling sound from inside. Cheryl jerked back to reality with a start, swung the door open, and marched through. I peered in behind her.

Jason Blossom had backed himself up against the window. He was holding a Bible like a shield in front of his chest, and his face was twisted into an expression of abject terror.

"Jay?" Cheryl whispered, her voice cracking at the edges.

Jason's pale face whitened further. He dropped the Bible and held his hands above his head. They shook visibly. "Cher, if he's sent you to kill me, please listen to me first, I'm begging you. Please. I'll do it myself after if that's what you want, if that's easier, but you've got to listen, Rylla. Please."

Cheryl took another trembling step forward. "Jay--I don't understand, Jason." She sounded like she was on the edge of a precipice looking down.

"Cheryl, are you here to kill me?" Jason asked. "It's a yes or no question." He held her eyes, but his shoulders wavered.

"No," Cheryl said slowly. "I'm not here to kill you, Jay. What--what happened?"

Jason lowered himself to the cot gingerly, resting his elbows on his knees, his head hanging down. "Cher--it all went south. Poll didn't show, and by the time I found her, I'd run out of money."

Cheryl kneeled down in front of him. "Jay, you should have called me." But she said it half-heartedly, more occupied with tracing her fingers across the front of his knee, as if he was an ancient statue she was trying not to break.

"I should have," he agreed, looking up at her. His eyes were red-rimmed and desperate. "But I--I couldn't make you do that. If I asked you for money, you'd never be able to get out on your own. You needed it as much as I did."

Cheryl inhaled sharply and sat back. "No. Jay, you didn't. Please tell me you didn't steal them." Her voice was low, urgent, and panicked.

"I'm sorry, Rylla," he murmured, "I'm sorry, I just didn't think."

"What did he steal?" Archie asked with interest. Cheryl's spine stiffened up.

"The ledgers," she explained frostily, swinging around to glare at him. "Every operative we hire signs the ledgers. It's a way of keeping track of our debts."

"A smoking gun," Archie breathed.

Cheryl rolled her eyes infinitesimally and turned back to Jason. "Daddy just stopped using them after you left. I asked why, and he said it leaves too much evidence."

Jason pursed his lips grimly. "Well, he's right. It does leave too much evidence, and all that evidence is sitting in the communal closet at the end of the hall, right now."

"You blackmailed Daddy," Cheryl murmured shakily.

"I'm sorry," Jason repeated, reaching for her hand. She pulled it away, and he subsided. "I'm sorry. I was starving, I was desperate, and I didn't know what the hell to do."

"You wanted the business to burn," Cheryl told him, her voice razor-sharp. "And running away wasn't enough. So you put yourself in danger, just to take Daddy down. If he sent you money, you knew you'd won. If he didn't, you could give the ledgers to the police. Am I right?"

Jason stared up at her, suddenly limp and broken. "Yeah," he said slowly. "You're right. But whose side are you on, Cher?" His eyes narrowed at her as if he was looking for hidden writing on her skin. "How do I know that Dad hasn't, I don't know, offered to give you the company if you just do him one little favor and kill me?"

Cheryl bit her lip, closed her eyes, and shook her head. "Yours, Jason. I'm on your side. Remember? I helped you run away."

Jason's eyes locked on Cheryl's face, scanning for tells. She held firm, except for a little tremble in her chin. "Okay," he said after a moment, his voice thick. "I trust you, Cher." He tried to add more, but he choked on a half-sob and fell silent.

Tentatively, Cheryl reached out a hand and touched his shoulder. "I'm so glad you're alive," she whispered, as his uninjured arm encircled her waist. She burrowed her face into the fabric of his shirt and took great, gulping breaths.

"I'm sorry," he murmured into her hair. "I'm sorry, I should have thought about what it would do to you."

"I forgive you," Cheryl said, her voice stronger now. "I forgive you, Jay." Her fingers clutched convulsively at his shoulder, and then she sat back. "But I need to know. Do you know who shot you?" Her eyes were steely, demanding the unvarnished truth.

Jason reached out for her hand. "Cher--" He broke off, gulped, and looked down, speaking as if he was reciting a speech. "Father replied to the letter, asking me to meet him. I got to the location, and took a bullet before I knew what was going on. I knew he'd try to stop me, but I didn't think he'd try to kill his own flesh and blood, Cheryl."

"You're an idiot," Cheryl observed scathingly. "But I understand. I'll be back for you within forty-eight hours," she added, her voice gentle, almost subdued. Her hand squeezed his softly, her lips gave him a faint ghost of a smile, and then she turned and swept out of the room before Jason could react.

He crumpled in on himself miserably, like a rag doll with the stuffing taken out. I turned to Ethel. "Find a payphone, and come get me." She nodded and dashed off.

"Who are you?" Jason asked from the bed, squinting at me a little.

"Jughead Jones, PI," I explained laconically.

"Jason Blossom, but I guess you know that," he returned. We nodded at each other, since his handshake hand was injured. Then his eyes fixed themselves on something behind me shoulder. "Betty? Is that you? Is Polly--"

"She's alive," Betty interrupted. "But she's living with your parents. She turned herself in so they wouldn't attack her family."

Jason tried to shove himself up from the bed, stumbled, and collapsed back down. "You've got to get her out of there."

"We're going to," Betty promised.

"Payphone's down the stairs, second left, on your right," Ethel panted from the doorway.

I turned on my heel and sprinted out, taking the stairs at a near-gallop, scrambling down the hall, cramming dimes into the slot, dialing the Riverdale Police Department, and lifting the payphone with shaky fingers. "Hello?" said the secretary, sounding bored out of her mind.

"I need to speak to Sheriff Keller," I gasped. "Tell him it's Jughead Jones. He'll want to talk to me."

The secretary made a disbelieving noise in her throat. "Alright, then. If you say so. Please hold." The line went dead. I could have screamed in frustration, but I settled for pacing the floor as far as the phone cord would let me: two steps forward, turn, two steps back.

"Hey, Jug," a familiar voice crackled over the receiver.

"Kev. Thank goodness," I babbled, cradling the phone like it was something precious. "Listen, I've got a tip, and I need you to trust me and move quickly, or someone's going to die."

Kevin's breathing on the other end of the line thinned out. "Jug, you don't sound like yourself. Is this a prank?"

"No, Kev, I swear it's not a prank. At least one life is in danger right now, but it could be anywhere up to six, and that's not counting me or my client. Can you hear me out?" I was desperate, and it probably showed, but I couldn't find the energy to care.

"I'm listening," Kevin said slowly. In his office, he'd probably set down the day's crossword and pulled over a pad of notepaper.

"Good. Listen, I need you to send a squad over to Thornhill and put Cliff Blossom in protective custody, due to anonymous death threats. There aren't any really, but pretend there are."  
  
There was a pause as Kevin scribbled a note. "You do realize that it's to everyone's benefit if Cliff Blossom dies, right?"

"The protective custody is to keep him from attacking Polly Cooper and, incidentally, V. They're both semi-imprisoned at his house right now," I explained.

Kevin hissed a little in shock. "Hell. On a side note, please tell me V's doing that Blossom girl. There is no other acceptable excuse for her. She missed game night, Jughead. Game night!"

"Stay focused," I admonished. "Cheryl Blossom is driving to Thornhill right now to kill her father. But you can't let her. I have actual evidence against the gang, and we're within sight of a confession if we turn the screws just right."

Kevin interrupted. "Jug, may I just ask, how is this the first time I'm hearing about this? I should have been in on the ground floor--"

"It's a long story, Kev," I cut in. "I'll explain later when I give my statement. I'm going to send Ethel by with the evidence I've got, then I'm going to drive my client back to her family. She can make her statement later--"

"Yes, sure, fine, cut to the chase," Kevin admonished breathlessly. "I'm on pins and needles here, in case you can't tell over the phone."

"Cliff Blossom tried to kill his son, _tried_ being the operative word," I explained hastily. Under ordinary circumstances, I might have waited for Kevin's reaction, but time was running out. "Jason Blossom is alive, and I'm at his location now."

"Address?" said Kevin. I gave it to him. "Okay," he said, in a businesslike way. "I'm sending a squad to Thornhill right now, along with a car to pick Jason up from whatever a _Sisters of Quiet Mercy Home For Troubled Youth_ is." He pronounced the name with definite distaste. "I'll stick around the office in case you need anything, Jug."

"Thanks a million, Kev," I said, and hung up before he could suggest that we go for drinks.

When I got back to the cell, Betty was kneeling down by Jason's bed and trying to talk him out of something that sounded like the beginnings of a panic attack. "Even if something happens," she soothed, "it's not your fault. You made the choices you thought were right, and regretting them doesn't change them. It's going to work out." His heavy, wheezing breathing quieted down, but only barely.

I pulled Archie and Ethel into the hallway. "Okay," I briefed them, "we're almost in the clear. Archie, the police are on their way, but I need you to stay with Jason until they get here. Don't let the Sisters kick you out, and make sure that both of you stay safe."

"Okay," said Archie soberly. "I won't let you down."

"Good," I said, clapping him on the shoulder with a thin, drawn-out smile. Then I turned to Ethel. "Eth, I need you to find the ledgers in the hall closet. Use your coat to carry them; we don't need a fingerprint fiasco on our hands. Take my car and drive the ledgers to the station. You're going to give them to--"

"Sheriff Keller, and only Sheriff Keller," Ethel finished, rolling her eyes a little. "I'm not an idiot, Jug."

I grimaced. "Sorry, Ethel. Stay safe, alright?"

Ethel nodded. "You too, Jug. Don't do anything dumb." She hugged me quickly, then set off briskly towards the closet. I ducked back into Jason's room.

"Jason?" He looked up, his breathing normal once more.

"Yeah?"

"I'm leaving someone here to keep you safe. The police are coming, and they'll get here soon. The nuns will probably put up a fight, because you asked for sanctuary, so you'll probably have to verbally express your consent to leave with the police," I instructed.

"I can't wait to get out of this place," Jason grumbled. "Seriously, it's pretty much my personal concept of hell at this point."

"That's the spirit," Betty said with a grin. "Are you gonna be okay?"

He flashed her a labored, rusty smile as she stood up. "Yeah, Betty. I'm fine. You go home."

My hand found its way to the small of her back as we ambled down the stairs, turned in our badges, and headed for the parking lot, where she set to work hotwiring a car that, despite being parked in an employee space, was _definitely_ a material temptation to the Lord's servants.

"You're going to have to come by the station later today and give a statement," I told her as she pulled out of the lot. The time we had together on this case was running out, and there was so much I wanted to say. But I couldn't think of a way to say it.

"Okay," she said. After a moment, she added, "Thank you."

"You don't have to thank me," I replied.

"Um--just let me know about your fees and I'll get the money to you," she suggested awkwardly.

It was a red light. We were only a few blocks away from her house. "Betts," I said, my voice wry. I meant to be serious, but I couldn't help but smile when I said her name. "Are you telling me that you think I'm going to charge you for risking your life to catch the gang that I've been trying to take down for half a decade? Kevin's going to want to give you a medal."

She flushed down to the roots of her hair. "I--please. Let me pay you, Juggie. I'll feel better about it."

"I'm not taking your charity," I warned her.

"This isn't charity!" she protested hotly. "Can you let go of your pride for a minute? I want to pay you, because I don't want to owe you anything."

The light turned green, and she slammed on the gas. "If you send me a check, I'll send it right back," I promised.

The car was silent, except for our breathing. There was a tear starting in the corner of Betty's right eye. "Why, Juggie?" she whispered.

Two blocks left. I took a shuddering breath. "Because if you pay me, then it's over. We don't have any reason to see each other any more."

"You're wrong," Betty insisted. "Okay? You're wrong. I--" She broke off, closed her eyes, and swallowed. Then she turned to face me with determination etched across her brows. "Ask me out to dinner. Next week, at Pop's Chocklit Shoppe. Eight PM, any night you like."

"Are you sure?" I asked, trying to get a read on her. Not only was my mind disconcertingly blank of useful information, I kept getting sidetracked by the curve of her lips, the slant of her brows, the arch of her neck--

"Yes," she confirmed, nodding her head decisively as she parked. "Go on. Do it. Don't be nervous, Jug. I promise I'll say yes."

Her eyes transfixed me. There was no other word for it: they were sparkling, laughing, bubbling, fizzing, brimming over with life, yet simultaneously deep, piercing, sincere, and so honest that it hurt. I shook my head to focus myself on the fact that her lip was wavering as if she was starting to doubt my answer.

"Okay, then. Do you want to get dinner next--"

I broke off as Betty gave a sharp, painful gasp. "Oh, _God_ ," she breathed, sounding sick to her stomach. "Oh, my God. We were wrong, Juggie, we were wrong. _Look_."

She pointed out the window with a shaking finger. I looked, but all I could see was Alice Cooper, walking back from the mailbox. "Betts, talk to me," I pleaded desperately. "Tell me what's wrong."

"We're wrong," she repeated. Her voice was panicked. "Polly's still there. Oh God."

"I don't understand, Betts," I begged as she slammed on the gas. Her face was ashen.

"It wasn't Clifford Blossom that killed Jason. I knew all along that it didn't make sense." Her eyes were wild and terrified.

All of a sudden, it hit me. The impact was roughly comparable to a speeding car: I was floored, the air was knocked out of my lungs, my skull was pounding, the world tilted and pulsed and swayed.

Alice Cooper had been getting the mail. Jason had sent his father a letter.

_"Mrs. Blossom, I have the mail for you and Mr. Blossom here."_

_"Thank you, Smithers. I'll go through it later. That will be all."_

"Mrs. Blossom looked through their mail," Betty explained, speaking tightly and quickly. "Most upper-class women go through all their family's correspondence. It's a polite-society thing; it might be intended as a way of reducing cheating or something." The speedometer ticked ever upwards as she drove.

Penelope Blossom had read the letter, forged her husband's reply, and shot her son. Worse, Cheryl, Polly, and Veronica were all at Thornhill with her, completely unaware of what she'd done, and therefore vulnerable.

I forced myself to stick to the facts. We couldn't know anything yet for certain. Veronica and Cheryl could handle themselves. "Where are we going?" I asked helplessly.

Her lips pursed tightly. "At the moment? Veronica's house. We're going to box up as many of her things as we can and pretend that they're Polly's."

"I see. We need proof, so we're going to pretend we're bringing by Polly's things--"

"And search the house for the original copy of the letter," she finished. "If we're lucky, she didn't throw it out."

"If she threw it out, someone could see it," I pointed out, checking the straps on my seatbelt to make sure they'd hold up to Betty's vigorous driving. "Even if you burn something, they can make out fragments. No, she'd keep it close so that nobody could find it."

"But the police are going to search the house--" Betty contended.

"We have to move fast before she tries to get rid of it," I concluded. "We can do this, Betts."

"I know," she agreed, setting her face resolutely.

The business of packing Veronica's things up was fairly quick: I grabbed a few old duffel bags out of the back of her closet and set about cramming as many blouses and pants as I could into their depths. By the time I was done, Betty had changed out of her undercover disguise into a white short-sleeved blouse and a flaring pink skirt, with a tan trench coat. She appraised the duffels with a critical eye, and then shooed me away so that she could add a more varied assortment of clothing articles, for maximum believability.

I handed her the bags and went to call Kevin. He picked up on the first ring. "That you, Jughead? Bad news."

I froze. "Kev, please tell me he's not dead. Please."

Kevin snorted. "You know, I never thought I'd see the day you wanted Clifford Blossom alive. No, that's not the bad news. The bad news is that your so-called _evidence_ proves nothing."

I took a single enraged breath, and exploded. "What more proof do you need? It's literally a list of everyone the Blossoms have ever hired to do their dirty work!"

"Or," Kevin pointed out reasonably, "it could be a mailing list for a Syrup of the Month Club. Any defense lawyer could make hash of it in a heartbeat. And I'm nowhere near any sort of confession from our captured kingpin."

"You have his son's testimony," I reminded him. "That's got to be enough to make a solid case. Please, Kev, I need this. It's starting to look like the wife's our killer after all, and we've got three civilians and an assassin trapped up there with her."

"Oh, God. The plot thickens. The police never make the right arrest the first time, though, so I'm not surprised. Who's the third civilian?" Kevin inquired. "Oh, wait, sorry. Forgot about the grandma. Anyway, Blossom Junior is legally dead, so he isn't going to be enough for an arraignment. Even if we go to trial, defense could get him thrown out for being of unsound mind, especially if the Sisters pitch in. If I take a gamble like this, Jug, I lose my job."

I bit my lip. "Kev, my client and I are going to Thornhill. Send backup in an hour. My files for the case, updated with my notes, are going to be at Veronica's place, under the couch in the living room. Got that?"

Kevin whistled softly. "You're crazy," he observed admiringly.

"No," I corrected him, "I'm the only person sane enough to want the Blossoms taken out at any cost. You got that?"

"I'm not telling V you're dead," he admonished.

"You won't have to," I promised, and hung up. "You ready?" I called to Betty.

She emerged from the bedroom and threw me a bag. "About as ready as I'm going to get," she admitted dryly. I caught the bag and led the way out the door.

We were halfway to Thornhill before I spoke. "Betty, if you don't want to do this, you don't--"

"Don't start," she insisted coolly. "I can do this, Juggie." She was saying it for her benefit as much as my own, though.

"I'm serious, Betts." It was a red light, so I turned to face her. "This is the lion's den. Honestly, it's probably just good strategy if one of us sits this out--"

"You need me for the cover story," Betty reminded me. "Jughead Jones has no reason to be delivering Polly Cooper's clothes." As the light changed, she shot back slyly, "Maybe _you_ should sit this out."

I scoffed as I crossed the intersection. "Really, Betts? What are you going to do without my superior intellect to guide you?"

A grin tugged at the corner of her mouth. "I imagine I'll get by," she retorted with a wink.

"Well, I guess there's only one solution," I declared.

"We go in together?" Her hands were relaxed, loosely draped over her knees.

I pretended to deliberate as I turned up the driveway. "I was going to say, we have a bare knuckle brawl to see who goes in, but I guess going in together works too."

Betty laughed breezily. "Together," she announced, holding up an imaginary glass.

I parked and held up a glass of my own. "Together," I agreed, and clinked my imaginary glass against hers.

She drained it deeply and smacked her lips. "Nice vintage," she determined. "It's rather nutty, but with some fruity undertones, wouldn't you say?"

"Velvet-like texture, but not so much garnet in color as one might expect from its aroma. I'd call the hue more of a sabled carmine," I responded, nodding my head gravely. "Perhaps a 1204 Jenesaisquois?"

"I think so," she agreed, and we burst into a round of riotous giggles as we shouldered our duffel bags.

Smithers answered the door, looking mildly harrowed by the day's events. "I'm sorry, sir, miss, but today's tour of the grounds has been canceled--"

"Would you please tell Mrs. Blossom that Betty Cooper is here to see her? Tell her I've brought some of Polly's clothes," Betty explained, her eyes sparkling sweetly.

Smithers beamed benignly. "Of course. And who is this young man?"

"My friend, Jughead Jones," Betty elaborated. "He's helping me carry some of the larger packages."

If Smithers recognized me from my friendship with Veronica, he gave no sign. I became uncomfortably aware that Betty's bag and mine were of comparable size and weight. "I'll go inform Mrs. Blossom," he told us, smiling twinklingly. "Will you have water while you wait?"

Betty and I declined and settled down to wait for Smithers' return. But Penelope Blossom must have been close by, because he reappeared barely a second later, directed us to the base of the staircase, and informed us that Miss Cooper's room was on the left. He further added that Miss Cooper was sleeping, but the things could be deposited in the closet adjoining her room, and that he would assist, if his other duties were not more pressing at the moment.

Then he left us alone at the top of the staircase. "This way," I directed her, setting off along the out-of-bounds corridor.

 _"Trust me, it's nothing interesting, just their bedroom, a spare room, two baths, their library, my father's office, and my mother's boudoir,"_ Cheryl had explained, holding her candelabra high in front of her eyes.

Judging by the length of the walls between the doors, the largest room was down at the far end of the hall, seemingly miles away. That was probably the master bedroom, but Mrs. Blossom's boudoir would be an adjoining room.

"Hurry," Betty whispered from behind me. "We don't have a lot of time, Juggie." Her hand reached forward and slipped softly into mine. "Which room?"

I tugged her forward on tiptoes, down the dizzying expanse of hallway. Thornhill's out-of-bounds wing was larger than Betty's house and Ronnie's house put together, and we had a lot of ground to cover, so we eventually gave up on tiptoeing and flat-out sprinted.

Betty was light on her feet, and she pulled me along with her by leaps and bounds. I felt giddy, as if I was flying and floating and falling all at once. Then again, that was probably because Betty, for some inscrutable reason, wanted me to ask her to dinner--or, perhaps, I was so terrified of being discovered that I was reassuring myself by imagining my footsteps were light. Or this whole thing was all a dream. At this point, all three possibilities seemed equally likely.

When we got to the door, there was no hesitation this time. I pulled it open for her; she stepped inside, dropped to her knees, and started pulling open the wardrobe. I crossed to the writing desk and tugged at the drawers, which were locked. "Pin," I whispered, and she tugged one out from her hair and handed it to me without pausing in her own search. We worked together like two musicians playing at a dance: concentrated on our own tasks, yet supremely conscious of each other and our surroundings. Our very breathing was in perfect harmony.

I methodically jiggled Betty's hairpin in the locks of the drawers, lifting each catch one by one with careful precision. The first drawer held envelopes, the second stationery, the third a neatly organized selection of bills. The fourth drawer, however, was marked "personal correspondence, unanswered," and the lock simply would not yield.

"Wardrobe's clean," Betty reported, standing up to look behind the paintings on the walls. I moved on to the fifth drawer, which held pen nibs, and the sixth drawer, which held catalogs. "Do you need help?" Betty asked, peering over my shoulder. I handed her the pin and stepped aside. She poked at the lock experimentally. "Actually, I think I've seen one of these before...looks like a normal lock, but it's actually--"

She broke off as the lock popped free. "A complicated lock?" I supplied.

"Pretty much," she agreed, wiping her hands. I pulled out the drawer and flicked through the papers. Every last one really was unanswered personal correspondence, and none of it was from Jason, but there should have been more of it in there, and the inside of the drawer was the wrong shape--

"People need to stop putting false bottoms on their drawers," Betty declared from beside me. "It doesn't accomplish anything, because anyone with halfway decent depth perception notices in five seconds."

I held out my hand for the hairpin and pried up the bottom of the drawer. Stacked neatly below was a thick stack of papers. The one on top was signed, "Jason".

"Don't touch those," I warned. "They're going to have to fingerprint them."

Betty moved to say something, but stopped. At the far end of the hallway, I could hear Penelope Blossom, talking to--

The scope of my world narrowed in the half-second between two heartbeats. My stomach sank through the floor, my ears pounded, my breathing went into overdrive.

"That's Polly," Betty realized, horror slowly clawing its way across her face. "That means she knows we're not delivering the clothes--oh, God, what's going to happen?"

My mind raced across possible scenarios with the desperate intensity of an animal at bay. Beside me, Betty was clearly doing the same: scanning the room (no windows, just one door), remembering the layout of the hallway (long and straight, with a clear view from end to end). Her fingers curled inwards slowly, as if some invisible force was resisting them at every millimeter. She gave a little involuntary hiss of pain as her nails grazed the raw skin of her palms--

I grabbed her wrists in my hand as gently as I could, uncurling the fingers. With my other hand, I reached to turn her face towards mine. "Betty," I said, every syllable fatalistic. "You wanted the truth, right? Here it is. There's no way out." Her eyes widened imperceptibly, and she must have read the rest of what I was going to say in my eyes. I forced myself to continue anyway, despite the sudden tightness of my throat, despite the way Betty was looking down at the floor, despite the single shudder that had throbbed through her body. "We are going to die, sometime in the next ten minutes."

The realization bloomed across her face like a rose or a bruise. She swallowed once, and absorbed it. "I'm so sorry," she whispered, soft and defeated. Then she added, "Why ten minutes? I would have thought sooner."

I marshaled my rapidly deserting thoughts into formation. "It's a long hallway, and she's going to pull open every door in it, one by one, and go into each room and look in every corner. That's going to take ten minutes."

"What do we do?" she asked, pulling her knees up to her chin.

I shrugged powerlessly. "We wait, I think. Do you need to pray? I'm going to try to look for one of the servant's passages."

"I'll help," Betty insisted. "It'll go faster." After a moment, she continued softly, "Besides, it'll take my mind off things."

I felt the seams of the walls, up and down: nothing. Betty pulled all the books out of the bookcase and checked for secret springs: nothing. I bent down and tested the floorboards: solid. Betty knocked on the walls: solid.

"If I lift you," I began, "do you think you can try the ceiling?"

But she had sat down on the floor again. "Jug--you want the truth too, right? No lies, no fabrication, no pretty varnish?" Her voice twisted around itself bitterly, and her eyes burned into mine like the heart of a supernova. "Well, here it is. There is no servant's passage in this room, or we would have found it already. You are never going to see your sister again. We are going to die here, as soon as Penelope Blossom gets to the end of this hallway. By the time the police arrive, there will be no evidence. If there is, it's going to disappear. If Cliff Blossom goes to trial, his wife will buy off the jury. He will be found to be innocent of killing his son, which he is. He will be found to be innocent of everything related to gang activity in Riverdale, which he isn't. The Blossoms will pick a scapegoat and pin everything on them, and justice will have been served."

"Just stop, Betts," I said, sinking down to the floor.

Betty laughed, bitterly and harshly. "I thought you wanted the truth. I thought you believed in it too."

"You think I don't know?" I snarled lowly. "Of course I know what's going to happen! I know all of it! In a couple years, Cheryl is going to fall into Sweetwater River and drown, and then Archie will get in a car accident and Veronica will be caught in a burning building and so on and so forth, and the coroner will take one look and rule them all accidental deaths. The truth about the Blossoms is going to die here, today, with us, unless we do something about it."

Betty was staring down at her hands, flexing them as if she'd never before thought to notice them. "There's nothing we can do, Jughead. We fought a good fight, and we lost."

"I'm sorry," I said, the words feeling hollow in my mouth.

Betty nodded, pursed her lips, and swallowed. I watched, rapt, as she reached up to brush a strand of hair back behind her ear, overcome with the sudden realization that no matter how long the universe lasted, Betty Cooper would never truly exist again. Even if Polly's daughter bore Betty's name and shared her smile, some essential element would be lost in translation, overwritten by the passage of time and generations. It would be as if the Mona Lisa were destroyed, and all that remained were the thousands of copies made by art students through the ages.

Betty looked up at me, and I tried to cherish each second I looked at her the way I should have treasured those moments all along. "I would have said yes to dinner," she admitted quietly.

"I know," I told her, feeling tears prickling behind my eyes. I blinked them back and willed the tightness of my throat to lessen. "I would have asked you, eventually. Even if you hadn't told me to."

"I know," she told me, and it sounded like a promise.

"I--I wish..." I began, but there was so much I wished, and the footsteps in the hall were audible now.

"What?" Betty asked, and her eyes dipped downwards, but not to the floor. Her lips trembled in time with the shaking of my hands, and we leaned towards each other like sunflowers seeking light.

I kissed Betty Cooper the way a condemned man smokes his last cigarette. Under my hands, her cheeks were wet, and her lips tasted of strawberries, with a faint salt tang. The hammering, desperate pulse in her neck fluttered, then quieted.

"I wish," I whispered into the corner of her mouth, "we could do that a million more times."

"Tuesday," she murmured, her eyes closed as I framed her face with my hands and smoothed back her hair with my hands. "If we make it out of here alive, take me out to dinner on Tuesday."

The door to the bedroom swung open, and high heeled footsteps clacked across the hardwood. I stood up slowly, testing my weight against the ground. "When she opens the door, run," I whispered to Betty.

She shook her head and planted her feet by my side. "Like hell," she muttered.

The door opened, and the barrel of a gun pointed straight at us. My eyes traced upwards to the cold, vindictive face of Penelope Blossom. "There you two are," she enunciated crisply.

There I was, about to die, but every nerve ending in my body was trembling and sparking like they never had before, and I realized with a jolt that I hadn't really ever lived before this moment. The colors of the room seemed brighter and warmer than I'd known colors could be, but the gun stood out like a sore thumb, a taunting reminder that every breath I drew counted down to my last. I wanted to jump for joy--yet also, to hit something so hard that it broke into thousands of jagged shards.

"You can't shoot us," I bluffed, edging slightly in front of Betty.

Penelope sniffed mirthlessly. "I know. Too much blood, too much noise. You can't shoot someone unless you do it in the middle of the forest, late at night when nobody's around."

"The police have our evidence," Betty hazarded, stepping forward around me. "If we die, then everyone knows we're right."

Penelope raised an eyebrow at the pile of letters in the middle of the room. "That's your case, right there. If they don't have that, they have nothing. Sit down on the floor. I'm not going to shoot you, unless you try to run."

"Did you shoot your son?" Betty asked, sinking gracefully to the floor, with one last longing glance at the doorway. Her back was straight, her shoulders were steady, and the contradictions in her eyes had resolved themselves into an expression of steely equanimity.

"Yes," Penelope admitted unflinchingly. "And I would do it again. You're both too young to understand, but when someone betrays you like that, when someone threatens everything you hold dear, then you have to act. You can either protect what you believe in, or choose to be weak and watch it crumble."

I kept my eyes on the gun as I settled on the floor. "You're going to kill us, then, or else you wouldn't have told us that."

Her lips tightened into a faint sneer. "Yes," she announced, crossing to the desk and pouring two glasses of water from a carafe there. She kept the gun trained on us the whole time, even as she pulled a packet out of her purse. "I'd been saving these up for Cheryl's little slut, but the right opportunity hasn't arisen yet."

"What is it?" Betty asked, her eyes locked on the glass Penelope handed her.

"Garden-variety sleeping pills, crushed very finely," Penelope explained, crossing back to the desk for mine. I didn't take it from her, so she set it down in front of me. "Drink up."

"If we don't?" Betty inquired, eyeing the glass with distaste.

A clear voice sounded from the hallway. "Mother, what's going on?"

"It's nothing, darling," Penelope called uneasily. "I think I heard Veronica asking for you upstairs."

But footsteps sounded in the hallway, and a second gun edged into the doorway. "You're lying. I heard you, Mother. I know what you did."

"Drop the gun, Cheryl, and then we'll talk," Penelope Blossom ordered coolly. But Cheryl's grip never wavered.

"You shot Jason. You were going to kill Veronica." Cheryl's voice was flat, but her eyes were sharp and cruel.

"Yes. Cheryl, we've talked about this. I am the mother, and you are the daughter, which means I make decisions for the both of us."

"I hate you," Cheryl whispered, as if it was a prayer. "I hate you; I hate you; I hate you."

Penelope scoffed. "Go ahead and hate me." Her voice raised to a yell. "I don't care, do you know that? I gave up on you long ago."

"I hate you," Cheryl repeated, her voice low and shaky.

"You have ten seconds to go away, Cheryl," Penelope warned, "or I swear to God I will shoot everyone in this house, you included, and say it was a home invasion."

"Nobody would believe you," Cheryl contended.

"Of course they would believe me, Cheryl. Ten."

There was a tightening in Cheryl's eyebrows. "Mother, please."

"Nine."

Betty's hand reached out stealthily to tap my leg. I looked over to her out of the corner of my eye. Slowly and delicately, she inclined her head towards Penelope's gun. Her hand splayed out on my leg with all its fingers extended. _When she gets to five, go for the gun._ "Eight."

"Mother--" Cheryl began, but cut herself off.

"Seven." I readied myself, quietly tucking my feet under me and bracing my toes in the floor in a glorified squat.

"Six." The syllable was clipped and precise. Cheryl's lip trembled and thinned.

"Five."

Several things happened all at once.

Cheryl Blossom fired a single shot. It went wide of its mark and buried itself in the wall.

Betty Cooper pulled her arm back and positively hurled her glass of sleeping-pill-and-water. It sailed in a perfect, beautiful arc that could have brought Euclid to tears and gotten her drafted by the MLB.

I rocketed off my feet and dove at Penelope Blossom. She twisted around to meet me, and Betty's drink splashed straight into her face. The glass slammed hard into her chest, hit the floor, and shattered. I grabbed her gun and wrenched the barrel up towards the ceiling, twisting frantically at her wrist until she dropped it.

Cheryl Blossom stepped calmly forward, kneed her mother into the wall, and leveled the gun at her head. With a perfectly manicured finger, she applied pressure to the artery at the side of Penelope's neck. It only took a few seconds for the other woman's neck to go limp. Cheryl let her mother fall to the floor, unconscious, without once moving to catch her.

For a moment, everything was perfectly, incongruously still. Then Betty stood up shakily. "I'll call the police and see if they're on their way. Jug, why don't you and Cheryl take Penelope downstairs to wait?"

I gripped at her arm as she passed me. "Betty--"

She knew what I meant before I even said it. "Someone's got to make the call, Juggie. It won't take long."

I knew that it wouldn't take long, of course, just like I knew that she wasn't likely to get hurt calling the police. But the fact remained that my heartbeat was tripping over itself so fast that all its beats felt like they overlapped. All I truly wanted, in that moment, was to stand somewhere with Betty, quietly, and touch her arm, slowly, up and down, as many times as it took to remind myself that she was alive.

"Okay," I said. As if she sensed my thoughts from across the room, Betty crossed over to me and wrapped her arms around my shoulders, bumping her forehead gently against mine. My hands splayed across the back of her waist, and I was instantly mesmerized by the feeling in the tips of my fingers as they traced across her back.

"We're not dead," she murmured, burrowing into my neck.

I turned my head to plant a kiss behind her ear. "Mm-hmm."

"You can let me go," she whispered, her breath warm on my shoulder.

"Do you want me to?" I inquired, dragging my index finger along her spine and feeling each vertebra beneath my fingers.

"Go, both of you," Cheryl directed, standing up slowly, staring down at her mother's sprawled form. "Send Veronica first, and then go get a room."

"You mean call the police?" Betty suggested, her eyes never leaving mine. They held the remnants of terror, but also mischief, exhilaration, relief, and contentment.

Cheryl snorted grimly. "If that's what you kids are calling it these days, sure."

We ran into an anxious, tight-lipped Veronica in the hallway. "I heard the gunshots," she explained tensely, her eyes darting between my face and the door behind me, her hands twisting at the hem of her blouse. "What happened?"

"Cheryl's fine," I said, watching as the tension drained from her shoulders. "She can explain all this."

With a brief nod, Veronica dashed off behind us. I turned to Betty, lowering a hand onto her shoulders and upturning her face towards mine. "Go talk to Polly," I suggested gently. "I can wait. There's a lot for her to take in, and it should come from you. I'll call the police."

"Okay," Betty agreed, standing on her tiptoes and brushing her lips across mine. The touch was light and soft, like a summer breeze, even though both our lips were chapped and bloody. Her fingers grazed my cheek once as she stepped back.

"Later," I whispered, leaning over to press my lips against her forehead.

"Later," she replied, catching my wrist in her hand, brushing her fingers across it, and letting it go with a quietly glowing smile. Then she turned and ran down the hall, while I made my way to the staircase.

There was a telephone in the main hall, but the only information the secretary at the police station could give me was that units had been dispatched to Thornhill already, and should be arriving shortly.

I was about to ask how long ago the units had left, when a shrill, sickening scream began on the upper floor. Slamming down the receiver, I sprinted up the stairs and collided with Betty. Her eyes were wide and panicked, and her breathing was frantic.

I took her hand and spun her around to face me. "Was that you or Polly?" I asked, even though I thought I knew the answer.

She shook her head. "No," she choked out, her throat tight. "No, it wasn't."

"Stay here with Polly," I suggested hopelessly.

"Polly's lying down still," she replied, already hastening forward. "She sent me to figure out what was going on."

There was nothing I could do to stop her from going into the room. "Veronica?" I called. As we approached, we could hear thick, choking sobs, growing louder by the moment.

"Just one second, C, okay, please? We have to handle this, okay? I'm going to be right back," Veronica's voice murmured lowly from the bedroom. "Just lie down, alright?"

Then Veronica stepped out and closed the door behind her. "Penelope's dead," she said tersely.

Betty's hand found its way into mine. "How?" she asked, her brows furrowing.

Veronica's chin was steady. "Cheryl and I woke her up to try and move her downstairs. But she got to the second glass before we could stop her and downed the whole thing in a swallow. We tried to do something, but she's gone."

Betty's eyes found mine, and I knew, somewhere deep within me, that she'd already guessed. She nodded firmly. "Okay," she said, and her voice was steady.

(Long ago, Betty had leaned against the window of my car, her face framed by the lamplight. Her voice had been brave and beautiful as she declared, _"I'm not in this to cover things up, or whatever it is people hire detectives for these days. No matter what the real story is, that's the one I want told."_ )

I pulled Veronica aside as Betty entered the room. "They're not going to find any fingerprints on that glass that shouldn't be there, right?"

Veronica's eyes stared back at me coolly. "What are you talking about? The only fingerprints on that glass are hers. She took it herself."

I bit my lip. "Okay."

"Good," said Veronica. Her face softened, but only slightly. 


	14. Epilogue: After the Mystery

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A few loose ends are tied up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Holy cow. We finally made it!

Penelope Blossom died on a Wednesday, and theoretically, everything after that should have been simple. Just a few loose ends to wrap up: no more.

Faced with the news of his wife’s untimely passing (and after a private visit from Jason, Veronica, and Cheryl), Clifford Blossom suddenly became astoundingly cooperative. Ten minutes in the interrogation room with Kevin sufficed to confirm that the ledgers were indeed a record of illegal activity. Penelope Blossom’s collection of letters was duly examined: they held her prints, but no others. Taken in conjunction with the Riverdale Police Department’s backlogged collection of cold case files, the letters told the grisly stories of nearly 50 individuals who had come too close to the truth about the Blossoms and paid the price. The entire police department, needless to say, worked plenty of overtime that night, poring over the ledgers in an attempt to match them with cold cases and known offenders.

At eight o’clock on Thursday morning, the Riverdale Police Department knocked on my father’s door and took him away in handcuffs.

I didn't learn about the arrest until nearly nine o'clock that night, when Ethel called to offer her sympathy, having heard the news from Ginger, who got it from Cricket, who’d overheard Nancy complaining to Trula about the ruckus they made dragging him away. By the time I cleaned my face up, made it into the car, and arrived at the station, it was bordering on ten.

“We're closed,” said Kevin as I walked in, without looking up from his desk.

"I need to see my dad.” I stated it as flatly as I could, but Kevin must have picked up on the hint of desperation in my voice. He put his pen down on the desk and looked up at me. The bags of exhaustion under his eyes were almost as pronounced as mine, but not quite.

"Jug,” he said, with a drawn-out sigh. “Please. Just come back tomorrow.”

“Can someone at least just tell him that I came?” I muttered. “He’s going to think that I don't care.” 

Kevin stood up from his desk. “Look, Jug, I’m headed home for tonight. I really can’t let you see him.”

I gave up. “What time do you open tomorrow?” I asked, turning to head for the door.

“Okay, fine, you can see him,” Kevin said suddenly from behind me. “Don’t tell anyone, okay? I could lose my job over this. Just tell the guard on duty that I'm calling in a favor.”

My face broke into a grin despite itself. “Thanks a million, Kevin. I owe you one.”

Kevin snorted dryly. “Are you kidding, Jug? You owe me a hell of a lot more than one.”

“I know, I know," I agreed good-humoredly, sauntering past Kevin’s desk and down into the long row of hallways that made up Riverdale’s jail. “I'll make it up to you, Kev! Promise!” I yelled back over my shoulder.

The guard on duty looked distinctly uncomfortable with the notion of letting me into the jail so late at night. Nevertheless, the mention of Kevin's name did its trick.

My father was leaning against the door of his cell when I entered, his hands sticking out between the bars. We were the only two people in the hallway, since the non-reformed Blossom affiliates had been placed in the high-security wing. My dad probably would have been placed there too, except they’d run out of room.

“Jug,” he said, making the syllable part of an exhale. “You here to bail me out?”

“Can't,” I replied briefly. “They won't let me until morning, and who knows how high they’ll set it. Sorry ‘bout all this, anyway.”

"Had it coming for a while,” he observed.

“I'm sure you did,” I agreed tersely.

“You know,” he began, “even if I go away--”

I cut him off. “You're not going away,” I insisted. “They’d be insane to do that. You haven't been involved with the Blossoms for years. The only people going away are Clifford Blossom and his longtime enforcers: no one else.”

“System doesn't work like that, Jug,” he reminded me coolly, drumming his fingers on the bars. “You talk to Jelly recently?”

“Nope. Anyway, I just--wanted to drop by. It’s gonna work out, Dad--”

He didn’t let me finish. “Stop saying that, Jug. Not everything works out.” His eyes burned fiercely into mine for a moment, as if to brand the words into my memory. Then he looked down and scratched at the back of his head. “Didn’t think  
I raised a fucking bleeding-heart,” he muttered disgustedly, more for his own benefit than for mine.

I resisted the urge to roll my eyes. “Okay, then. I’ll play. What’re you trying to tell me here? To step up my act and make something of my life? ‘Cause I already did.”

He chuckled hollowly. “Jug, I’ve got a list of priors taller than you. Blossom’s main henchmen were smart enough not to get caught up until now. I’m going down. I--”

He broke off. High heels, down the hallway. “Who’s that?” I hissed.

My father’s face had blanched the instant he heard the sound, but he set his jaw as he drew back into the cell. “One of four or so people off the top of my head. All with good reason to want me out of the picture. If I don’t see you again, son, then I want you to know that I’m sorry. For all of it.”

“Way to think positively, Dad,” I muttered to myself, hurrying down a bend in the hallway. I got my gun out, though, just in case he was right.

The footsteps came closer and stopped. My dad took a long, shuddering breath, held it for a moment, and then blew it all out at once. “Didn’t you see outside? We’re closed.” His tone was caustic and biting, yet defensive: it reminded me of the first time Jelly had seen him drinking. Maybe it was some misplaced sense of masculinity, but my dad had always been at his most bitter when he was blindsided and vulnerable.

“Press pass,” said a familiar voice, the words stiff and clipped. “Gets you in most places. Plus, the guards all know I’m a bitch.”

 _Alice Cooper_. My hand tightened on my gun, and I edged forward around the corner soundlessly.

My dad had sprawled himself out on the cot in the corner of his cell, with a mock-courteous smile stretching itself almost insolently across his face. His trigger finger, however, was rubbing nervous circles across his knee. Alice Cooper was standing just in front of the cell door, her head held rigidly upright and her shoulders ruler-straight. His eyes sought her face with a driving intensity; she made a point out of allowing his gaze to roll off her.

“Press pass, huh? You here for an interview, Al?” He flung the words bitterly, watching with hungry eyes as they struck home.

She gave a little exasperated sigh that reminded me of Betty. “No, I’m not, FP. If I was here for an interview, I’d have brought a tape recorder, not a lockpick.”

His jaw tensed at that, but he managed to salvage the tell by turning it into a sneer. “Kind of you to think of an old friend in need. Does your husband know you’re here?”

That one hurt her: I could see her head jerk back as if he had hit her, even though she didn't move more than an inch. He knew that it had hurt her, judging by the way his shoulders tensed for a counterattack, and she knew that he knew. I expected some sort of outburst, but all she did was step back a foot or so and meet his eyes for the first time. “No,” she said quietly. “Hal doesn’t know I’m here.”

The lines around his eyes sagged a bit. “Breakout it is, then. You covered all your bases?” he asked, drawing himself up.

“Do you need to ask me that?” Alice snapped acerbically.

He shrugged. “For all I know, suburban living’s made you go soft. Humor me, Allie.”

Her jaw tensed. “Not my name, FP.” Then she continued on as though the digression had never occurred. “The guard was at the neighborhood potluck today. He’s going to spend the next hour in the bathroom, and he’ll blame Mrs. Doiley’s undercooked salmon instead of my cupcakes. Getaway car’s in the back parking lot, with plates from an old Model A that Hal’s fixing up. The local kids swipe his auto parts all the time.”

He nodded, watching her with a measured, hawk-like gaze. “Cash?”

“In the glovebox, with a change of clothes and a workable fake license. Your new name is Michael Johnson, by the way. It’s my old backup, but I dripped a bit of grease on the ‘a’ in ‘Michaela’. It’ll hold up to a once-over, if you stay out of trouble.” As she spoke, she worked expertly at the lock on the cell door.

My father stepped out as soon as Alice opened the cell. She drew back as if to let him pass, but he made no move. Their gazes reached a deadlock; they were arguing, silently, and I had no idea what the point under discussion was.

“You’re going to need to lock me in,” Alice declared finally.

His face darkened. “Al--are you telling me you’re staying here?” There was a hitch in his voice that I’d never heard before.

Her eyes dipped down and closed. “Yes,” she said simply.

“With no fake license, no backup car, no cash, no escape options at _all_ , and your shitbag of a husband?” His voice was harsh and grating now, with an edge of anger to it. Whenever he talked to me that way, I made a rule of getting the hell out.

Alice exhaled, sharply and frustratedly. “For the last time, FP. He has a name. It’s Hal, in case you forgot, just like your wife’s name is Gladys.”

My father stiffened for a second, caught off guard. Then he deflated all at once. “Gladys left. She left me, she left my son--”

“Well, then,” Alice interrupted fiercely, “you get it. I can’t leave my girls.”

“It’s not rocket science, Allie, just file for a fucking divorce. I mean, does he even love you anymore, or is he just keeping up appearances at this point?” He was right up in her face now, his hands pressed tightly to his sides as though he wanted to gesticulate with them but wasn’t going to.

Alice heaved a sigh and threw up her hands. “You know, I don’t want to get into this with you right now, FP. I didn’t break you out because I wanted to run away with you. Here’s the situation: I love him. I don’t even know why I love him anymore, but we’ve been married for twenty-five years, I’ve been on the straight and narrow path the whole time, and he still thinks I’m going to hurt him one of these days.” My father stretched his hand out towards her shoulder, but she pulled away. “Anyway,” she said, “the point is, I broke you out, so either go or don’t go. The ball’s in your court.”

She turned on her heel, marched past him into the cell, and started pulling the door shut, but his hand on it stopped her. “So if you still love him, then why the hell’d you break me out?”

Alice made a noise that was somewhere between a sigh and a laugh and a sob as she sat down, slowly, on the cot. “I don’t know. Pick one. Maybe I’m just nostalgic for criminal activity. Maybe I think you don’t deserve what they’ll do to you. Maybe--”

“Maybe,” he said slowly, his gaze never leaving hers, “Serpents look after their own.”

She looked up, suddenly, surprised by that. Her hand in her lap was playing with her wedding ring. “I’m not a Serpent anymore, FP. I gave that up. I’m Alice Cooper now.”

“You can be both,” he murmured.

Alice squeezed her eyes shut and pressed her hands to her temples. “I shouldn’t have come. I don’t even know what I’m doing here.”

“You came here,” he said, his tone measured and careful, “to interview me. I threatened your family, said I had people who could take them out at any time if you didn’t unlock the door. It was horrible and terrifying and all that.”

“Doubtlessly,” Alice said wryly.

He snorted and moved on. “You yelled for help, but nobody heard you, so you did what I said. Then I shoved you in the cell, locked you inside, and took off running.”

“Alright,” she agreed, biting the inside of her lip. “Stay safe, FP.”

“You too, Al. C’mere.” He held out his arms in the cell doorway, and she swallowed, got up, and hugged him.

“Call collect when you’re out of town,” she murmured, gripping his neck tightly.

He pressed his lips into her hair, rubbing gently at the tension between her shoulders. “I’ll pay you back for the cash and the car.”

“You don’t have to.”

“I want to,” he protested.

“Okay,” she agreed, stepping back and letting him go. He closed the door, took one last look, and jogged off around the corner. I tried to follow him, but he was already in the car by the time I reached the door, so I watched him drive off, leaning forward to try and see him for as long as I could. Then I jogged back through the empty hallway of the low-security wing and signed out at the desk a minute after Alice Cooper’s sign-in time.

That was Thursday. On Friday, the _Riverdale Herald_ ran a front-page piece on the Blossom gang, with the byline “Elizabeth Cooper, Staff Writer.” At nine o’clock on Saturday morning, my phone started ringing off the hook with requests for consultations and interviews. A few minutes after ten, my doorbell started ringing for all the people who thought they were too important to call ahead of time.

I almost missed Betty when she came in. It was a little after two in the afternoon, and I had just finished explaining to a lady in a mink coat that I had no interest in determining whether or not her dog had been abducted by aliens, but that she should check her fence for holes to see if he could have escaped that way.

“Betty,” I said gratefully, shooing the mink lady out the door. Then, remembering the sort of stupid, horrible things the universe liked to do to me, I asked, “Is something wrong?”

I took a long, hard look at her. Nothing seemed to be wrong: she was a little flushed in comparison to her cream-colored dress, and her hat was slightly askew on her head, but her eyes were alight with mischief and joy, which meant that whatever had her flustered was decidedly a good thing. “No, everything's great. Do you need me to wait?” she asked. “There’s talk in the other room of starting a charitable fund to buy you new waiting room chairs, so you should see them quickly, before they break their backs and go away.”

I wasn’t listening; I’d caught sight of the brown paper bag she held clutched in one hand. “Betts, please say you brought that for me. They kept me working all through lunchtime, and I’m famished.”

She set it on the desk. “It’s for both of us. I’ve been busy today, too, but I wanted to see you, and I couldn’t wait until Tuesday.”

I grinned, already rooting through the sack. “Well, if you hadn’t come by today, I would have found you tomorrow. Tuesday’s been feeling very far away, recently. What do you mean, busy?”

She pulled the wicker chair up to the desk and started talking, all about how Jason and Polly had faced the music for twenty-four hours, then given up and eloped, and she’d been a witness at the wedding: her father had been furious, but her mother had dragged him off into their bedroom, where they’d talked for almost an hour and both come out crying...

The sack contained two egg salad sandwiches, neatly cut into triangles, two covered containers of potato salad, two apples, and a tart-sized fruit cobbler, cut in half. It was divine, of course--the bread was homemade, hearty and golden, the egg salad had a sweet, juicy bite to it (maybe she put pickles in there?) and the perfect texture--

“I quit my job today,” Betty said, swallowing a nibble of sandwich.

I put what remained of my triangle down on the table. “Is everything okay?”

She took a sip of water from a bottle. “Yeah, no, everything’s fine. But I realized, writing the article yesterday, that the writing part was the least interesting bit about it. I think--I think I was in love with the concept of journalism, if that makes sense. But what I’ve always liked about journalism is the actual finding things out, not as much writing things down. I had all these grandiose dreams about being the next Nellie Bly.”

“I’m sorry, Betts,” I said. She smiled gratefully.

“Eat your sandwich, Juggie. I didn’t make it for you to stare at.” She watched me until I complied, then went on, “Anyway, it was nice to quit. They were shocked, of course, and they’re frantically trying to figure out which paper stole me away. Hey,” she paused to take a bite of potato salad, “maybe they’ll hire you to figure it out!”

“ _The Adventure of the Generous Contract_ ,” I declaimed, laughing. Then I stole her water bottle from the desk in front of her. “In the interests of detection,” I asked, taking a long swig, “ _have_ you been stolen yet?”

She snatched at the bottle, but I leaped to my feet and held it over her head. “Juggie, give that back!”

“Tell me first,” I replied, dangling it teasingly. She started climbing up onto the desk as she spoke.

“No, I haven’t been st-- _ow!_ Stop tickling me, Juggie!” She swatted my hand away from her ribcage. “No, I’ve gotten offers,” she continued, “but I’m not taking them.”

I handed her back the bottle. “You need help getting down?”

“No, I don’t need help,” Betty said, beginning to clamber down. “But I would like a job.”

That brought me up short. “A job. As in, a job _here_? With me? You want to be partners.”

She put the water bottle on the table and stepped back carefully. “You don’t have to do that, Juggie. If it’s easier, I could just be a secretary or something. I mean, it’s your business, and I’m not taking it from you.”

“Betty, it was hardly a business until you walked in the door. I don’t think I’ve had this many clients in a year before, let alone a day,” I protested. “If you want in, then you’re in as a partner.”

Hre eyes widened just a fraction, and I felt a silly grin spreading across my face. “I want in,” she said decisively.

“Then you’re in,” I declared. “Partners.”

“Partners,” she agreed, picking up the water bottle and toasting me with it. She handed it to me, and I took a long swig.

“They say people who drink from the same cup are connected in spirit,” I began.

“Jughead Jones, are you _flirting_ with me?” Betty gasped teasingly. Then she took the bottle and drank again. “What happens if they do it twice?” she inquired, holding it out to me.

I took it and drained the rest. “I don’t know,” I said, pretending to think. “Maybe it means they’re married--”

“My mom can only handle one surprise marriage a month, I think,” Betty cut in.

My grin grew so large that it threatened to disengage from my face and become a separate entity. “Who said anything about us getting married? No, in this case, I think it means that they’re business partners.”

Betty snorted. “You’re ridiculous,” she said impishly, and then her lips rocketed towards mine, burning and soothing all at once. I braced myself against the desk and devoted only a passing thought to the sensibilities of my clientele before abandoning the train of thought in order to kiss back.

“So is that what business partners do?” I asked innocently, wiping my mouth. “Because I think I could get behind that. It’s hard work, but I like it.”

She giggled. “No. We’re going to have to hire Ethel and Archie to do the serious work for us.”

I raised an eyebrow. “And that work is going to get done how? I mean, Ethel I can see, but Archie--”

“He has potential,” Betty insisted defensively. “Come on, admit it. You’ve missed him a little.”

“Can we get back to the topic of us being business partners?” I suggested. “I feel like we were making some real headway there.”

Betty stepped closer and took a deep breath. “I think,” she said, staring at my lips, “we should take a look at our taxation status--”

She broke off with a surprised laugh as I gripped around her waist and picked her up. Her arms locked about my neck, and I spun her around the room the way I used to spin Jellybean years ago. Her legs flew out, and her dress billowed around us.

“Juggie, I’m going to get dizzy,” she warned, breathlessly laughing the whole time. I set her down on the desk.

“Are you sure you’re ready for this? Our partnership?” I asked.

“Depends. Are you?”

For answer, I pulled her closer. “Let’s wait and see.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, I'm going to try to keep this short, but it'll definitely end up long.
> 
> First of all, I am incredibly grateful to everyone who has graced this AU with a comment or kudos. Seriously, I would probably have done this AU without you, but it wouldn't have been nearly as fun! To my regulars (who know who they are): Hearing from you guys makes my day! It's been so much fun being on this journey together, and I love all of you!
> 
> If you're sad it's over, so am I. But I've got another AU up my sleeve: a Murder on The Orient Express AU for the Bughead AU Project! It's going to be a ton of fun, and I hope to see you all over there. I'm also interested in starting to take requests, so if there's something you want me to write, just give me a holler, either here or on my tumblr!
> 
> Anyway, I think that's it. Bughead forever, guys! Love to each and every one of you!!!!!!!
> 
> -Naomi

**Author's Note:**

> I'm really enjoying writing this one! 
> 
> To borrow a joke from the Jungle Cruise: if you liked it, I'm formergirlwonder on Tumblr. If you didn't like it...then I guess I'm still formergirlwonder on Tumblr. Funny how that works out, isn't it?
> 
> By the way, does anybody have recs for fics featuring couples similar to Bughead in other fandoms? There are simply not enough Bughead fics in the world, but I don't know what else measures up!!!
> 
> See you guys next time!!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Noir Riverdale](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10954362) by [redcirce](https://archiveofourown.org/users/redcirce/pseuds/redcirce)




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